Austin mayoral race headed to a runoff between Kirk Watson and Celia Israel
Former Austin mayor Kirk Watson and State Rep. Celia Israel are headed for a runoff election in December. Neither candidate for Austin mayor crossed the 50 percent threshold necessary to ensure victory.
Israel received 117,632 votes (40.5 percent) to Watson’s 101,609 (34.98 percent), according to Travis County’s election results. Jennifer Virden, the race’s more center-leaning candidate, finished third with just over 18 percent of the vote.
The runoff is scheduled for December 13.
Israel tweeted this morning about the runoff, saying: “The good ol’ boys weren’t happy with us last night! The people spoke loud and clear — Austin, Texas, is NOT for sale. Proud to be your frontrunner. Let’s do this one more time on December 13th.”
Watson tweeted about the inevitability of a runoff, in his view: “We’re heading into a runoff! With five opponents in this race & all of the chatter in those races that were above us on the ballot, we always anticipated a runoff. Being in a runoff gives us the opportunity to continue reaching out to more people & hearing from more people.”
Early voting for the December 13 runoff will begin December 1 and run through December 9.
Watson served as the city’s mayor from 1997 to 2001. From 2007 to 2022, he was a state senator in the Lone Star State.
Since 2014, Israel has been the state representative for the 50th district, which covers parts of Travis County.
