Shirts off as Austrian election heats up
Print Edition
Austria’s general election campaign is heating up. Two high-profile contenders have gone way beyond rolling up their shirt sleeves — they’ve taken the shirts right off.
Borrowing a page from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s playbook, the beefcake displays are the latest twist in the rivalry between populist candidate Frank Stronach and Heinz-Christian Strache, head of the anti-immigrant and EU-skeptic Freedom Party.
They are both seeking the protest vote in Austria’s September 29 election.
Stronach was first to doff his shirt. Wearing jeans and a smile, he revealed a trim 80-year-old upper body as he stood next to his private lake during interviews.
“I don’t need to be ashamed of my body,” the Austro-Canadian billionaire said.
Strache responded immediately. A photo of the tanned and athletic 42-year-old clad in swimming trunks appeared on his Facebook page, with the caption “top fit in the election campaign!”
Austria’s major newspapers carried both photos.
Commenting on the “naked duel,” the tabloid Oesterreich praised Stronach for “showing the new self-confidence of the generation ‘60 plus.’ In politics. In fitness. In looks.” But it warned that Strache’s decision to challenge Stronach “with his fitness-center muscles” risks turning the campaign into a circus.
The rivalry started when Stronach founded “Team Stronach” last year, aiming for the same voters Strache’s Freedom Party views as its own — Austrians disenchanted with the conservative People’s Party and the Socialists, parties that form the government coalition.
Andreas Schieder, a leading Socialist official, urged both men to focus on the politics of “naked facts, instead of naked upper bodies.”
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