Kitchen could not lose

Even though Council colleagues Pio Renteria and Mayor Steve Adler faced a number of opponents in their respective campaigns for re-election, and there was a spirited fight in Districts 1 and 8, where the incumbents are retiring, District 5 Council Member Ann Kitchen ran unopposed in Tuesday’s election. She told the Austin Monitor she was excited to start her second term. “It’s really been an honor to represent District 5 and so I’m looking forward to continuing to work with all the wonderful people in District 5 and continue the work we’ve been doing on affordability and transportation and health care,” she said. Kitchen was first elected to Council in 2014. In 2016, supporters of transportation networking companies, angry about Austin’s regulations and Kitchen’s role in writing those regulations, gathered signatures on petitions to recall her. However, the city clerk deemed the petitions “insufficient” because the political action committee behind the recall effort failed to get the petitions notarized. This year, an inept, would-be opponent gathered signatures on a petition to have his name placed on the ballot, but some of those signatures came from people outside of Austin and some were duplicates. In the end, he did not have enough signatures to get his name on the ballot and no one else in District 5 wanted to run against Kitchen.