AUSTIN, Texas — Former Austin City Council member Kathie Tovo announced Thursday she is running to be Austin’s next mayor. 

Tovo was first elected to City Council in 2011 as an at-large member, and she served as mayor pro tem from 2015-2019. She was then reelected as a council member representing District 9 in 2018 and served in that position until January 2023. 

According to her campaign website, Tovo is running to help Austinites “who can’t afford high-paid lobbyists to advance their interests.”

“She believes in an Austin where every person has the right to succeed,” the website said. “She knows that Austin can be a city where the workers and families who have built this community, who keep the lights on, who keep the gears turning, and who show up every day in the hopes of a better life for their loved ones can remain and thrive.”

Some of the accomplishments Tovo touts from her time on City Council are investing in child care facilities, supporting policies that expanded access to affordable housing, providing more than 1 million healthy, free meals to area students and introducing a strategy to create emergency shelters during extreme weather events following the 2021 winter storm. 

Tovo is currently an adjunct faculty member at the University of Texas. 

Current Austin Mayor Kirk Watson has not announced whether he will run for reelection. He previously served as mayor from 1997-2001. He was then elected to the Texas Senate in 2006 and was in that office from 2007-2020.

Watson ran for his second term as Austin’s mayor in the 2022 election and won by the narrowest margin in over two decades in a runoff election. The mayor normally serves a four-year term but the passing of 2021 ballot measure moved the mayoral election to coincide with the presidential election, shortening Watson’s term to two years.