Exasperated by cost of housing, Salzburg could elect a Communist mayor

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By Francois Murphy

SALZBURG, Austria (Reuters) -Salzburg, the home of Mozart and «The Sound of Music», is not a place known for radical change.

The picturesque Austrian city, which draws tourists from around the world to its baroque palaces, Christmas market and summer festival of classical music and theatre, has had mayors from only two centrist parties since World War Two.

But now residents' growing exasperation at some of the highest housing costs in Austria could push them to elect a young Communist as mayor in a run-off election on Sunday.

«Our key issue, affordable housing, is not just an issue for people who have to live on a very low income but rather it has become an issue for the broad majority of people who live off their work and not their wealth,» the Communist candidate, Kay-Michael Dankl, said in an interview at his party's offices.

If he wins Sunday's run-off against Social Democratic Deputy Mayor Bernhard Auinger, Salzburg will follow Austria's second city Graz in having a Communist mayor. The cities are rare successes for a party not even in national parliament.

«Many people who have lived in the city are moving back to the countryside or going back (elsewhere) because rents are extremely expensive,» said 26-year-old social worker Michelle.

That Dankl's party, the Austrian Communist Party Plus (KPO Plus), came a close second in this month's city council election shows that protest votes need not be the preserve of the far-right Freedom Party (FPO), which leads in national polls but came fifth in Salzburg.

«Really this is an election based on personality,» said political analyst Kathrin Stainer-Haemmerle of Carintha University of Applied Sciences.

Dankl, a 35-year-old historian and former leader of the