Kavala's municipal government, which governs a territory of 350.61 square kilometres and a population of 66,376 according to the 2021 census, operates from the Ertzoch Mansion, built in 1890 by the Hungarian-Jewish tobacco merchant Baron Pierre Herzog. The modern municipality took its current form through the 2010 Kallikratis local government reform, which merged the pre-existing municipalities of Kavala and Philippi. The city holds a notable footnote in Greek political history as the place where Dimitris Partsalidis became the country's first Communist mayor in 1934, decades before the office was held by current mayor Theodoros Mouriadis.