Tuesday’s election brought stunning Republican victories up and down the ballot. The red wave even touched Travis County — a Democratic stronghold — where Republican President-elect Donald Trump received his most votes ever. But there was at least one notable conservative defeat: Austin City Council Member Mackenzie Kelly.
First elected to represent District 6 in 2020, Kelly lost to liberal former real estate appraiser Krista Laine by 2.6 percentage points in a two-way race.
During her first term, Kelly has cast her fair share of conservative votes, but she has been anything but a right-wing firebrand. Ultimately, that didn’t matter.
Political experts and insiders said Kelly fell victim to the political tendencies of both the district and the city as a whole — and the current burn-it-down state of partisan politics.
“It’s hard to be a Republican in Austin,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political scientist. “She was the lone conservative voice on council, and that made her a clear target.”
Texas’ major urban areas all lean Democratic these days, but Austin is the original — and brightest — blueberry in the tomato soup of Texas politics. It has had a deeply Democratic electorate for generations. That has been reflected in the makeup of the 11-member City Council, which is technically nonpartisan but has in recent history had a supermajority of self-described liberals.
In Tuesday’s election, 68.3% of Travis County voters cast ballots for Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump, compared with 42.38% statewide. (In 2020, 71% of the county’s voters backed President Joe Biden.)
‘A remarkable win’
David Butts, a longtime Democratic political consultant in Austin, led a charge to get other Democrats to support Kelly during this election because of her views on land use. But he said he warned her a year ago that she needed to distance herself from Republicans because her opponents would use that to drag her down.
Laine’s campaign did just that.
“MACKENZIE KELLY OPPOSES LGBTQIA+ RIGHTS,” said one digital ad Laine shared on X that was paired with a photo of Kelly, Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and a list of local policies she had voted against.
“MACKENZIE KELLY OPPOSES ABORTION ACCESS,” said another.
Sundas Amer, who moved to the district last year and voted for Laine, said postcards she received in the mail with similar messages influenced her vote.
“The thing that swayed me was it said that Mackenzie Kelly … is like a little bit more in cahoots with Greg Abbott” and other Republicans, she said, referring to the Texas governor.
Jim Wick, who worked as a strategic consultant for Laine’s campaign, said Kelly was “out of step” with voters in her district and that it’s a misconception that Northwest Austin leans conservative.
But in a year when conservatives largely outperformed liberals, Wick said Laine’s victory was a testament to her years of organizing in the community.
“It’s a remarkable win,” Wick said. “She is one of the only Democrats to unseat a Republican in the state, even in the face of overwhelming Republican turnout.”
In a tearful interview with the American-Statesman on Thursday in her City Hall office, Kelly said that many of the claims Laine made during the campaign were misleading. Allegations that she didn’t support the LGBTQ+ community, for example, were “a slap in the face,” she said, picking up a framed collage of her and her colleagues outside Austin City Hall on National Coming Out Day.
But despite his warnings, Butts said Kelly ultimately “stayed true” to her political beliefs, and he thinks that’s what cost her the election.
Among Kelly’s most contentious dissenting votes: nays on city resolutions condemning the Legislature’s passage of a near-total abortion ban and another state law that put restrictions on access to gender-affirming care.
But she said those votes were more about the fact that such resolutions, which are legally nonbinding, had no power to actually change state law.
“Did I vote against items that people thought would help those communities? Yes. Did I vote against abortion rights? Yes,” Kelly told the Statesman. “But I think that it is extremely disingenuous in an elected role to pass a policy that says, ‘to the extent legally possible,’ when it’s not legally possible because it’s not within our means to be able to address.”
The fickleness of District 6
District 6 also has an established history of booting incumbents for new candidates with different political leanings.
In 2020, Kelly beat sitting Council Member Jimmy Flannigan in a runoff election. Flannigan, in turn, had ousted conservative Council Member Don Zimmerman in 2016.
In the city’s other council districts, it’s rare to see candidates use hyperpartisan tactics.
Butts said he used a similar attack strategy in 2016 to help Flannigan oust Zimmerman, who was a far more bombastic conservative force than Kelly has been. Kelly has passed several policies that would be considered bipartisan with her progressive colleagues.
Laine, who will assume Kelly’s seat in January, said she decided to run for office because she wanted “better city services, and so does the district, regardless of their political party.”
She ultimately felt it was important to highlight Kelly’s conservative bona fides during the campaign because she encountered some voters who wanted to know each candidate’s political persuasions to make a better informed decision on who aligned with their values.
Redistricting also could have played a role in Kelly’s loss.
When council district lines were redrawn in 2021, District 6 lost River Place, a neighborhood that backed Kelly in 2020 and was viewed as a contributing factor in Flannigan’s defeat. River Place is now in District 10, which had no conservative candidates on the ballot this year.
Kelly acknowledged that she “lost a significant number of support(ers)” from redistricting. But she also noted that she had won support from plenty of Democrats in the district “who really did believe in what I was doing.”
“They still voted for me,” Kelly said. “I just came up about 500 votes short.”
Danny Smith, a self-described “hard-core progressive,” was one of those voters. The retired critical care nurse said he disagrees with Kelly on some issues but that he got to interact with her some during her first term and was struck by her work ethic and passion for the job. She is the only conservative he has ever voted for.
“I know that her heart is in it, because I’ve seen it up close,” Smith said.
No conservative voice
Kelly acknowledges that she didn’t sway the fate of many municipal policies. But she said she at least brought a different perspective to policy discussions.
“I thought that that was of great value, and I did so in a way that I can remain proud of,” Kelly told the Statesman. “I was respectful, and I didn’t go all scorched earth like other council members who’ve held this position.”
Rottinghaus said Kelly’s loss is definitely bad for conservative Austinites, who won’t have any representation at City Hall for at least the next two years.
“Without a conservative voice, people who feel similarly … are going to feel disenfranchised,” Rottinghaus said. “That’s something we’ve seen a lot of in this country.”
