Westside City Council Races Go to Polarized Run-Offs

In Northwest Austin's District 6 City Council race, incumbent Jimmy Flannigan will face Mackenzie Kelly in the run-off election, scheduled for Dec. 15. Flannigan just barely won the plurality of votes in Travis County (38% compared to Kelly's 36%) but ended the night with a larger lead among Austin's Williamson County voters (43%-30%). Jennifer Mush­taler finished third with about 19% of the vote in both Travis and Williamson counties.

Flannigan has been here before. In 2014, he led Don Zimmerman after the Novem­ber election, but lost in the run-off; in the 2016 rematch, Flannigan ousted Zimmerman by an even wider margin. "I am energized," Flannigan told the Chronicle by phone on election night. "We have shown that my leadership in this district and across the region has led me to be the top vote-getter in this race. We enter the run-off in the lead and we will carry it out in December."

In lower-turnout run-off races, money and an effective ground game play an even bigger role than usual – two areas where Flannigan has had the advantage. But it is not immediately clear where Mushtaler's roughly 6,000 votes will go (she has not yet said if she'll endorse in the run-off); she ran as a centrist Democrat, but campaigned hard against Flannigan's votes to decriminalize homelessness and reallocate money away from the Austin Police Depart­ment and toward other social services, among other things.

Those issues were central to Kelly's campaign, and the neighborhood preservationists who financially boosted Mushtaler's campaign are no fans of Flannigan, so it's conceivable that much of the Mushtaler vote could go to Kelly. She feels the same way, telling us, "D6 was drawn as a conservative-leaning district in 10-1, so we're taking back our turf. We have a small army of volunteers hungry for change at City Hall, and tonight's numbers reflect that."

Incumbent Alison Alter is heading for another run-off herself in Central and West Austin's D10, which has never been decided on Election Day since the 10-1 council took effect in 2014. Alter finished in first place with 34% of the vote and will face off against Jennifer Virden, who ran farthest to the right, beating out Robert Thomas with 25% of the vote compared to his 17%.

Pooja Sethi, who ran as the most progressive candidate in a solidly centrist district, took home only 18% of the vote, but combined with Alter's results, it means the majority of D10 voters wanted a Democratic candidate. Those numbers have Alter projecting confidence. "D10 voters are looking for somebody who is a person of integrity and who makes wise decisions," she told us Tuesday night, "and I'm looking forward to making my case against a Trump supporter." Alter won four years ago in the run-off against moderate Republican incumbent Sheri Gallo, amid a huge backlash driven by female Democratic voters after Trump's win in November.

In 2020, Virden contributed $225 through WinRed, the national GOP's online fundraising platform, some of which was earmarked specifically for Trump's reelection. That should make her vulnerable in the run-off – Trump beat Biden in just one of the 29 precincts in D10. But Virden isn't concerned; she's confident her staunchly conservative law-and-order message will prevail over Alter's more pragmatic approach on homelessness and public safety. "Everything is going according to plan," Virden told us. "The homeless population explosion and defunding of the police have been important issues in this campaign, and I'm going to keep hammering on the Council's decisions there."