Kirk Watson elected Mayor of Austin in runoff

Austin has a new mayor.

Kirk Watson won the capital city’s mayoral election, defeating Celia Israel by 886 votes, the Austin American-Statesman reported. While the results are unofficial, Israel conceded the race to Watson and will not request a recount.

Watson will serve a two-year term as mayor because Austin voters approved a change last year that will align mayoral elections with presidential ones.

Watson, who served as Austin’s mayor from 1997 to 2001, and most recently served on the state senate, was the favored candidate going into the runoff, but Israel put up quite a fight. Even though her campaign raised less money than Watson’s, Israel’s platform focused on the city’s housing affordability. As a 58-year-old, gay Hispanic woman, Israel appealed to voters of color and the LGBTQ community, while Watson, 64, targeted older residents who remembered his previous turn at the helm.

The unofficial results show Watson netted 50.3 percent of the votes, while Israel received 49.6 percent. The runoff came after none of the six candidates received a majority of the votes in the general election last month. At the time, Israel had 40 percent of the vote, while Watson had 35 percent.

One of the key questions leading up to the runoff was whether voters who had voted for the third place finisher, conservative Jennifer Virden, would return to the polls to decide between two Democrats. Watson, whose campaign was a little more conservative than Israel’s, appealed to Virden’s supporters by emphasizing tax cuts and public safety. Virden tweeted some statements implying that she supported Watson over Israel, but she never officially endorsed him.

Early voting saw only 11 percent of registered voters in Travis County go to the polls for the runoff. For the nation’s 11th-largest city, that came out to only 72,000 people.

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