Welcome to our final Mayoral Monday! Five candidates are running to be Austin’s mayor, so for the past month, we’ve shared our interviews with them all. Get informed before you vote, y’all!
Kirk Watson is on the City Cast Austin podcast today making his pitch to continue serving as Austin’s mayor. Here’s a snippet of our interview:
Let’s say I am brand new to town, or that I’ve never voted for you. Why should I vote for you now?
“I have a history and record of being able to get things done. Local government needs to work efficiently and it needs to work with some dispatch and speed. Since I have been in office, we have moved pretty quickly on some big issues that needed to be worked on and needed to be fixed, things like affordability; how we address the needs of people living homeless; how do we address issues of public safety. We've had really good success — it's been a two year term —the next term will be four years. And I'm running again so we can finish what we've started, continue to get things done, and make city home work faster and more efficiently to meet the needs of the people.”
If you could bring back any music venue that we've lost over the years, which one would it be, and why?
“Probably the Armadillo World Headquarters. And the reason I would say that is because I just missed it. It's one of those iconic Austin things that, no matter how long you've lived here, no matter whether you were born here and have lived all your life, uh, but if you were born after the Armadillo World Headquarters closed, some people don't think you really are an Austinite. You shouldn't be allowed to make any decisions about Austin.
It closed just, like, two years before I got to Austin, Texas. And since music was a big part of what caused me to fall in love with this town, I wish I had had that.”
How would you fill in this blank: If you care about blank, then vote for Kirk Watson.
“If you care about the future of Austin and affordability in this town and getting things done so that city government is working, vote for Kirk Watson.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For the full conversation, listen to the episode below.
