One last round of elections for 2024: Your Austin-area Runoff guide

After the monumental presidential election of 2024, most of us were content to prop our feet up, pop open a Topo Chico for this warm end to the year, and take a well-deserved break from the daily political grind.

Not so fast: there remains some unfinished business in many places, and that includes Travis County. If you live in Austin ISD, City of Austin District 7, and/or the City of Manor, there's a runoff election scheduled for this Saturday, Dec. 14. More info here. So far, just under 14,000 voters have submitted their ballots.

While there are no strong conservatives in the running this time, we believe there remain candidates that are head-and-shoulders above their competitors in terms of experience and overall philosophy. That's why we put together this short voters guide for you last-minute shoppers.

Austin ISD Place 8 (At-Large):

The Tracker recommends a vote for Lindsey Stringer, an Austin ISD graduate and a longtime education professional. While she appears to play the identity politics game and is no friend to school choice (see her plan to fix enrollment here), we are impressed by her common-sense, local-based solutions to stop the bleed of families away from AISD. As it stands now, enrollment is way down (even closing Texas's oldest continually operating school campus), and not even a massive tax hike on Travis County taxpayers approved in November is enough to solve the $93 million deficit the district has accrued. Her opponent, Fernando Lucas de Urioste, has spent most of his campaign advocating the divisive distractions that have led to the failures of AISD in recent years. As such, he is endorsed by numerous far-left and progressive organizations. Stringer, however, is endorsed by several former Austin ISD Trustees who advised against passing the horrendous November 2024 bond (see our coverage here), and that tells us she is a favorite of pragmatists who simply want to see local public schools succeed. And the cherry on top: The Austin Chronicle made it a point to assail Stringer for a previously stated pro-life position. We're sold on Stringer, now.

Austin City Council District 7

The Tracker cautiously recommends a vote for Gary Bledsoe in this North Central Austin district. While both candidates can be fairly described as liberal, Siegel is an outright leftist radical. And there's not a nicer way to say it. Filling in outgoing Council member Leslie Pool's shoes in a way that faithfully represents the district will require someone willing to lift the phone and talk out differences, rather than run a steamroller over them. Bledsoe spent many years in the trenches with the local NAACP, while Siegel is a community organizer and union activist whose recent claim to fame is making it even harder to be a police officer in Austin. Bledose, on the other hand, gets one important thing right: Austin "is headed in the wrong direction!" -- his words from a recent forum. Siegel, however, seems proud of that direction. Bledsoe is an advocate of local government transparency and doing what we can to keep our old neighborhoods from being replaced with social engineering projects. Save Austin Now has endorsed Bledsoe, which means he's the more law enforcement friendly candidate.

Mayor of Manor

With plenty of trepidation, we recommend keeping Dr. Christopher Harvey as mayor of Manor. While we know certain things about the town (like how it's pronounced may-NER -- you're welcome, newcomers), we're not deeply familiar with the ins-and-outs of this growing city in East Travis County. But we've observed three things that lead us to our recommendation: 1) rapid growth requires a steady hand at the helm, and Manor is about to get a lot more of that growth, 2) Harvey works well with someone we've endorsed in the past, Maria Amezcua, a common-sense, pro-growth Council member, and two other Council members, and 3) those Council members have been working hard to help Manor grow up. Harvey has been mayor for about as long as his opponent, Tricia Campbell, has been a resident of Manor. We like what Campbell has to say, while we're absolutely stupefied by Harvey's list of top endorsements (including Congressman Greg Casar, a radical progressive). Harvey is touting his numerous municipal lobbyist group trainings, which is another red flag. (Does he want to push conservative voters away? Because that's how you do it.) On the surface, this seems like a good reason to vote for anyone-but-the-incumbent, and Campbell seems to be the strongest advocate of keeping taxes and spending under control. At least in written and spoken form. But Harvey raises a solid point about the local tax base: It's about to boom. Getting things under control and making the necessary preparations for growth is how a burgeoning city avoids getting stuck in a debt trap down the road. We haven't seen enough of Campbell's track record in politics to know if she would be the more fiscally conservative mayor, especially as a project manager with the ever-expanding and expensive University of Texas (although according to her LinkedIn she has only worked there about a year -- before that she worked for a construction company). We advise Campbell to stick around awhile and build a resume around her priorities, becoming the local voice for fiscal sanity. For now, we'll recommend giving Harvey another term to see some projects through -- including some much-needed road improvements.