Linz before the election: caretaker Potocnik wants to renew the city!

The political landscape in Linz is facing profound changes after Mayor Klaus Luger resigned from his office in August. This has led to a situation in which the SPÖ only has three members in the city senate, although according to the results of the 2021 local council election it is entitled to four mandates. However, the replacement of the vacant city council position has now been settled in time for the mayoral election on January 12th. The new candidate, Gegenhuber, currently heads the Linz Institute for Transformative Change and recently taught business administration at Johannes Kepler University orf.at reported.

But in the midst of this political upheaval, there is another unconventional mayoral candidate: Lorenz Potocnik. He demands that the future mayor must have both caretaker and visionary qualities, and he is the only one capable of fulfilling these requirements. In his candidacy, Potocnik emphasizes that there is no clear vision for urban development and that he plans to look at the “regiopolis” between Linz, Wels and Steyr as a whole. He appeals to voters to try it out, as the election only affected the mayor and not the local council due to Klaus Luger's early resignation, which represents an opportunity for new ideas, such as nachrichten.at determines.

Potocnik's ambitious agenda

Potocnik uses his slogan “Try me” to promote his unconventional candidacy. He sees himself as an independent mayor, free from party political constraints, and has his sights set on making some important changes to the city administration. This includes cutting the security service and hiring 30 street sweepers in the first 100 days of his term in office. He would like to take special care of the 20,000 EU citizens eligible to vote in Linz and plans to create multilingual information videos to motivate them to take part in the elections. Potocnik is pursuing a modification not only of the city administration, but also of inter-municipal cooperation and is optimistic that “everything is moving” in this electoral period.