Felix Reinhardt (1951-) was an Austrian FPO politician who served as Chancellor of Austria from 1 November 1999 to 11 September 2000, succeeding Viktor Gruber and preceding Laurenz Hamerling. Reinhardt, initially a far-right nationalist and later a pragmatic national conservative, led the FPO to become the nation's largest party throughout the latter half of the 1990s and briefly served as Chancellor after a wave of anti-austerity sentiment gripped Austria.
Biography[]
Felix Reinhardt was born in Klagenfurt, Austria in 1951, the son of a Waffen-SS veteran. Reinhardt was raised in a working-class, Catholic, and nationalist family, and Reinhardt's father's nostalgia for a Greater Germany influenced the political views of his son. Reinhardt lost a finger on his right hand in a skiing accident when he was 24, but he went on to become a successful media entrepreneur. Reinhardt became active in politics with the national liberal Freedom Party of Austria at a young age, and he welcomed its right-wing populist turn and, on being elected to the National Council on 9 April 1990, was chosen as the FPO's parliamentary leader. Reinhardt was initially a junior partner in the OVP coalition governments of Anton Franz and Laurenz Hamerling, but his pragmatic political views enabled the FPO to rise to be the largest party in the country for much of the 1990s. Reinhardt's views were consistently nationalistic and socially conservative - he supported an immigration ban and opposed same-sex marriage and abortion - but he was less inclined towards economic liberalism and occasionally sided with the SPO on matters such as universal basic income, universal education, and other left-wing economic programs.
Reinhardt was continually kept out of the chancellorship by an informal cordon sanitaire against the FPO by the OVP, Social Democrats, and The Greens, even as his party remained the most popular in the nation. In 1998, he was kept out of the premiership only when two OVP MPs broke ranks with their party and voted to keep SPO leader Viktor Gruber as Chancellor, resulting in a tied vote and the continuance of Gruber's rule. 1999 saw the FPO go to war with the SPO in the media and the polls, with Reinhardt tearing into Gruber's hoarding of state budget money that had been obtained through austerity measures; Reinhardt proposed either spending it on programs or cutting taxes. The political polarization caused by this confrontation led to the Greens and OVP taking a backseat as the FPO and SPO became the two largest parties in the country and showed down in the November 1999 elections. The weakened OVP chose to support Reinhardt over the SPO and Greens, breaking the cordon sanitaire and bringing Reinhardt into power after years of having been kept out.
Premiership[]
Reinhardt inherited a budget of €210 million with a weekly increase of €8 million, an increase which he believed signified a meaningless accumulation of money. Reinhardt immediately went to work. The Council voted 26-2 to create national holidays, 22-4 to create a pension program, 19-7 to create free museums, 24-2 to lower the constitutional amendment threshold to 50%, 24-5 against a car tax, 25-4 to keep the national football league, 16-9 for a universal basic income, 15-8 against hosting the Olympics, 24-7 against a driving license program, 23-7 to keep the travel visa, 16-12 against a five-seat election majority bonus, 20-11 to abolish the stamp duty, 20-6 against same-sex marriage, 16-13 to abolish highway tolls, and 17-12 to keep the food control program.
On 28 August 2000, new elections were held. The FPO rose to 36.32% (+2.9%) and 13/35 seats (+1 seat), the OVP rose to 31.75% (+7.23%) and 12/35 seats (+4 seats), the SPO fell to 28.13% (-5.01%) and 10/35 seats (-2 seats), and the Greens fell below the 5% electoral threshold at 3.8% (-5.12%) and lost their three seats. Far from helping Reinhardt, however, the elimination of the Greens (the kingmakers between the OVP-SPO alliance and the FPO) and the fall of the SPO into third place allowed for OVP leader Laurenz Hamerling to challenge Reinhardt's re-election. Hamerling returned to office by a margin of 18-15, winning the support of his party and the SPO and evicting Reinhardt.