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Applicants for the party chairmanship can now be nominated at the CDU. Nobody dares to take cover yet. The SPD is already further with the reorganization of the party leadership.
Berlin – Around six weeks after the Union’s debacle in the federal elections, the CDU started looking for a new party leader. From today on, applicants can be nominated for the post of CDU chairman.
At first, nobody officially threw their hat into the ring. Rita Süssmuth, President of the Bundestag for many years, encouraged women to run for office.
As likely candidates for the successor of Armin Laschet are ex-Union parliamentary group leader Friedrich Merz and the foreign politician Norbert Röttgen. In party circles it is possible, but less likely, that Union parliamentary group leader Ralph Brinkhaus or the chairman of the middle class association of the CDU / CSU, Carsten Linnemann, apply for the post. All four come from North Rhine-Westphalia.
Saxony’s Prime Minister and CDU boss Michael Kretschmer called for team spirit and a “real jolt”. Renewing the party is not about a sprint. “We have to prepare for a marathon,” he said at a state party conference in Dresden.
Deadline until mid-November
The application deadline for the federal chairmanship is November 17th. The new CDU leadership is to be elected at a party conference in January in Hanover. Before that, the party members are asked who should succeed Laschet. Laschet was only elected CDU chief in January 2021. With him as candidate for chancellor, the Union had a historically poor result of 24.1 percent in the election on September 26th.
The Rhineland-Palatinate CDU member of the state parliament, Ellen Demuth, who was Röttgen’s chief strategist when Laschet and Merz applied for party chairmanship in 2020, declared that she would not be part of the team with Röttgen. At RTL / ntv, she justified this with “different views on the repositioning of the party”. Demuth does not want to run as chairperson either.
Süssmuth for parity
The former chairwoman of the CDU’s Women’s Union, Süssmuth, would like women to stand as candidates. “If no woman competes, that would not be a good sign. We fight for parity. Women should have the courage to run for office. It would be an important signal, ”she told the editorial network Germany.
The outgoing Chancellery Minister Helge Braun relies on a wide range of candidates. “I hope for an exciting member survey for a candidate field with real alternatives,” said the CDU politician of the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”.
Braun emphasized the importance of solidarity between the CDU and CSU: “If the union is not closed, it cannot be successful. And when the CDU and CSU are at odds, the rift always goes through the CDU, because we have many friends of the CSU too. “When asked whether this is also possible with this CSU boss, he said:” Of course a close alliance with Markus Söder possible. “
He in turn offered the CDU to get involved in the upcoming state election campaigns. “As the CSU, we want to do our part to ensure that the Union as a whole regains stability,” said Söder to the newspapers of the Funke media group. “After this election campaign we have to find a new way of working together.” He will certainly work well with the next CDU chairman. In the coming year there are state elections in Saarland as well as in Schleswig-Holstein, North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony.
Baden-Württemberg’s Interior Minister Thomas Strobl wants to continue to lead the state CDU in the future, but no longer wants to run for the deputy federal chairmanship. As the German press agency learned, the 61-year-old announced on Friday evening in committee meetings of the Southwest CDU in Stuttgart that he wanted to apply again for the state chairmanship at the party congress on November 13th. At the federal party congress, however, he will no longer run as party vice.
SPD is clearly further
The SPD is also looking for new management staff, but is already further ahead than the CDU. The SPD leaders Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans want to submit a proposal to the party executive on Monday. Esken is running again as party leader, Walter-Borjans not. Secretary General Lars Klingbeil had openly shown himself to be party leader, Esken supports this. The SPD leadership is to be elected at a party congress from December 10th to 12th. Esken and Walter-Borjans took over the leadership of the SPD in December 2019. At that time, a party congress confirmed a membership decision in favor of the two.
The former vice vice president Ralf Stegner expects Esken and Klingbeil to form the new top duo. “I assume that it will come that way,” he said on Deutschlandfunk. At the same time, Stegner emphasized that the party leadership does not consist of just two people. There is a strong parliamentary group, very popular prime ministers and others like the Jusos who spoke up. “There is a lot of strength there,” said Stegner, who was elected to the Bundestag in September. Stegner, who belongs to the left wing of the party, also called on his party to support a future government led by it. dpa
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