User:Kaiserjaeger0/sandbox

Political career

Stocker became a member of the municipal council in Wiener Neustadt in 1990, where he served as local party chairman from 1992 to 1995. In 2000 he became chairman of the Vienna ÖVP and second deputy mayor, and since 2015, first deputy mayor. From 2000 to 2010 he was responsible for construction as a city councillor, then for schools until 2015. From 2015 he was city councillor for finance and education, after the 2020 municipal council election he became city councillor for the finance, property and real estate management departments. [ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ]

In 2017, he ran for the National Council election in the regional constituency of Lower Austria South and in the state constituency of Lower Austria. [ 8 ] On 12 June 2019, he was sworn in as a member of the National Council in the XXVI legislative period . [ 1 ] He replaced Johann Rädler, who resigned from his mandate. [ 2 ] In June 2021, Stocker was re-elected as city party chairman of the People's Party of Wiener Neustadt, with Franz Dinhobl and Gerlinde Buchinger as his deputies. [ 9 ] In December 2021, he became a member of the ÖVP corruption investigation committee [ 10 ] and, as successor to Karl Mahrer, spokesman for internal affairs and security in the ÖVP parliamentary group [ 11 ] and chairman of the Interior Committee in March 2022. [ 12 ]

In March 2022, he was elected as deputy district party chairman under ÖVP district party chairman Christian Stacherl [ 13 ] , the mayor of Krumbach . [ 14 ] [ 15 ] In September 2022, he was appointed as the successor to Laura Sachslehner as general secretary of his party . [ 16 ] [ 17 ] For the 2024 National Council election, he became the ÖVP's top candidate in the Lower Austria South regional constituency [ 18 ] and seventh on the ÖVP federal list [ 19 ] and he won a direct mandate for the Lower Austria South regional constituency. [ 20 ] After the 2024 National Council election, he became a member of the ÖVP negotiating team to form a government with SPÖ and NEOS. [ 21 ]

After the resignation of Karl Nehammer following the failure of the three-party coalition negotiations between the ÖVP, SPÖ and the NEOS, Stocker was appointed party chairman of the ÖVP on 5 January 2025. [ 22 ] Immediately after his appointment as party leader, the ÖVP under his leadership began negotiations with the FPÖ , which had emerged as the strongest party from the 2024 National Council elections. [ 23 ] Until shortly before, Stocker himself had repeatedly made extremely critical statements about the FPÖ in the media as party chairman. [ 24 ] [ 25 ] The negotiations with the FPÖ ultimately failed on 12 February 2025. [ 26 ] After the 2025 municipal council elections, he resigned from his Wiener Neustadt mandate and left the office of deputy mayor, [ 27 ] but remained city party chairman. Matthias Zauner became acting city party chairman . [ 28 ]

From the repeated coalition negotiations between ÖVP, SPÖ and NEOS, he emerged as the most promising candidate for the office of Austrian Chancellor in the Stocker federal government . [ 29 ] His National Council mandate is to be taken over by Thomas Elian . [ 30 ]