Michael Ritsch

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Michael Ritsch (2017)

Michael Ritsch (born July 9, 1968 in Bregenz ) is a social democratic state politician in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg . Since October 5, 2004 he has been a member of the Vorarlberg state parliament . From 2007 to 2016 he was also party chairman of the SPÖ Vorarlberg . Michael Ritsch was union secretary from 1992 to 2007.

Political career

In 1986, at the age of 18, Ritsch joined the young generation of the SPÖ and started his political career. From 1990 to 1995 Michael Ritsch was city representative for the SPÖ in his hometown of Bregenz for the first time. Since then he has been a city councilor in the Vorarlberg state capital. In the municipal council and mayoral elections in 2005, the SPÖ in Bregenz won massively and Michael Ritsch was even able to challenge the incumbent mayor in a run-off election, which he was subsequently unable to win with 47.44%. In addition, after the state elections in Vorarlberg in 2004 , he moved into the Vorarlberg state parliament on October 5, 2004, where he became area spokesman for housing, local politics and control for the SPÖ state parliament club. In addition, he was appointed by the state parliament to chair the control committee. After Elke Sader resigned from this position, Ritsch also took over the office of club chairman of the SPÖ parliamentary group in 2007 and shortly thereafter also chaired the Vorarlberg SPÖ.

After the state elections in Vorarlberg in 2009 , in which the SPÖ suffered massive losses and lost 3 of their original 6 state parliament mandates, Ritsch offered to resign as state party chairman. However, this offer was rejected by the SPÖ's state party executive on September 21, 2009, the day after the election. In an interview with ORF on Saturday after the election, Ritsch also questioned his running in the municipal council and mayoral elections in Vorarlberg 2010 as a candidate for mayor in Bregenz . After the party executive had expressed their full confidence in him, Ritsch decided to run again for the office of Mayor of Bregenz.

However, Ritsch also suffered a severe defeat in the mayoral election. Compared to the 2005 election, in which he was able to force incumbent Markus Linhart from the ÖVP into a runoff election for mayor's office with 37.32 percent of the vote, he lost 11.23 percent in this election. Since Linhart was able to grow strongly at the same time, Ritsch remained more than 30 percentage points behind his direct competitor in the 2010 direct mayor election.

On the occasion of the state party convention of the SPÖ Vorarlberg on November 4, 2011 in Wolfurt, Michael Ritsch was re-elected by the party base as state party leader with 92% of the delegate's votes. Ritsch presented a “10-point program for Vorarlberg”, which he said should serve as a guideline for the Vorarlberg Social Democrats with regard to the following state elections in Vorarlberg in 2014 .

On the occasion of the state party conference of the SPÖ Vorarlberg on August 22, 2014 in the exhibition hall in Dornbirn , Michael Ritsch was re-elected as state party leader by the party base with 99.1% of the votes. The party base was also introduced to the "Coolman" (an adapted garden gnome ) who was part of the SPÖ's campaign strategy for the 2014 state elections in Vorarlberg . The disappearance of several hundred dwarfs briefly triggered an unexpected international media response (see Zwergenklau in Vorarlberg's election campaign ). In the election itself, the SPÖ Vorarlberg still lost 1.25% of the vote and achieved its historically worst result with only 8.77% and, for the first time in history, a single-digit result in a state election in Austria.

In the municipal council and mayoral elections in 2015 , Ritsch in Bregenz again suffered losses. Both the SPÖ Bregenz and Michael Ritsch as mayoral candidate lost just under 3.5 percent of the vote compared to the 2010 election, which means that Ritsch once again lagged behind Mayor Markus Linhart, who, thanks to a narrow absolute majority, did not have to go to the runoff election.

On September 30, 2016, Ritsch resigned from the chairmanship of the SPÖ Vorarlberg due to health problems, but remained a member of the state parliament and club chairman of the SPÖ in the Vorarlberg state parliament. After the state elections in Vorarlberg in 2019 , in which the SPÖ was able to easily win again, Michael Ritsch was again a member of the Vorarlberg state parliament, but handed over the chairmanship of the SPÖ state parliament club to the new state party chairman Martin Staudinger .

Web links

Commons : Michael Ritsch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ news .at: Michael Ritsch - New Minusman of the SPÖ: Four years earlier he was considered a bearer of hope . Retrieved November 12, 2014 .
  2. ↑ Election result of the mayoral ballot in Bregenz 2005. (Website of the state election authority)
  3. ^ ORF Vorarlberg: Ritsch questions mayoral candidacy . Article of September 26, 2009.
  4. ↑ Election result of the direct mayor election in Bregenz 2010. (website of the state election authority)
  5. ^ ORF Vorarlberg: SPÖ state party conference: Ritsch re-elected with 92 percent. Article dated November 4, 2011.
  6. ^ Vorarlberg: High approval for SPÖ boss , ORF Vorarlberg from August 22, 2014
  7. ↑ Election result of the direct mayor election in Bregenz 2015 (website of the state election authority)
  8. ↑ The new SPÖ boss does not want to be the top candidate. ORF Vorarlberg, September 30, 2016, accessed on October 3, 2016 .
  9. ↑ Tony Walser: Ritsch renounces the SP club boss in favor of Staudinger. In: Vorarlberger Nachrichten (VN.at). October 18, 2019, accessed October 21, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Ritsch, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian politician (SPÖ), member of the Vorarlberg state parliament
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH Bregenz