Austin mayor runoff: Follow election results here

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In a race defined by the city’s rampant unaffordability, Austin voters will decide a brand new mayor Tuesday evening to information the capital metropolis over the subsequent two years because the area offers with explosive development.

The selection within the mayor’s race is between two Democrats: state Rep. Celia Israel and former state Sen. Kirk Watson. The race went to a runoff after neither candidate acquired greater than 50% p.c of the vote within the November election.

Whoever wins Tuesday evening might be tasked with determining how one can tamp down Austin’s housing affordability disaster, which has impacted residents all through the town and performed a central position within the race. Home costs and rents in Austin, which had already been climbing quick within the final decade, skyrocketed amid the COVID-19 pandemic and file demand for houses within the area.

Check again under at 7 p.m. Central Time when vote counts will begin to are available.

Israel, who can be Austin’s first brazenly homosexual and Latina mayor, and Watson, who served as the town’s mayor from 1997 to 2001, have every laid out in depth proposals for how one can sort out the housing disaster and increase the town’s housing provide.

However, they’ve approached the problem in numerous tenors. Israel has referred to as for aggressive motion and stated she’ll work intently with “pro-housing” advocates; Watson has promised a extra diplomatic technique that brings in additional new housing with out alienating neighborhoods that oppose it.

The victor can even should cope with the state’s Republican management, which has grown more and more hostile to Austin and Texas’ bluer city areas. Within the previous two years, Austin lower the town’s police spending within the wake of the George Floyd protests and rolled again a ban on homeless encampments in public areas — strikes that Republican lawmakers within the Texas Legislature later rebuked by passing new legal guidelines reining in these measures and limiting different main Texas cities from following in Austin’s steps.

So far, turnout within the contentious race has been significantly low. Of the practically 623,000 Travis County residents registered to vote in Austin elections, lower than 71,000 voters — or about 11% — forged their ballots throughout early voting within the mayoral race and three Austin City Council runoffs. That’s lower than 1 / 4 of the 291,545 Travis County voters who forged ballots within the mayoral race through the November midterms. (Austin additionally stretches into Hays and Williamson counties.)

Whoever prevails Tuesday evening should run once more in two years, reasonably than 4 as Austin mayors usually do. That’s as a result of Austin voters handed a poll proposition final 12 months to maneuver the town’s mayoral elections from gubernatorial election years to presidential election years in a bid to extend voter turnout.