When candidate councilors and a handful of volunteers report to the bridge in front of Utrecht city hall on a sunny Saturday afternoon, one thing immediately stands out. They don’t put on their white coat with the green party logo until they arrive at the D66 cargo bike, filled with leaflets and apples. And when Emma Dolmans, number 13 on the list, is relieved after an hour and a half, she first stuffs the light D66 windbreaker in her bag before cycling to a birthday party elsewhere in the city.
Unfortunately, that is necessary, says campaign manager Venita Dada-Anthonij. “We have strict agreements for our safety.” One of these is: do not walk down the street recognizable as a D66 member. A second: never go out on your own or without us knowing.
In the polarized political landscape, even local politicians can no longer do their job carefree.
On this Saturday, two and a half weeks before the council elections of March 16, D66 indeed appears not to be popular with all passers-by. “You can be nice handing out apples,” says a man in a penetrating tone to Dada-Anthonij, “but that does not fit at all with D66.” Are you serious?, the campaign manager replies kindly. “Yes”, says the man with the text ‘This is the end of time’ taped to his chest. “You want to kill everyone with your Complete Law of Life.”
“You get a lot of Kaaghaat over you,” said number 5 on the list Berdien van der Wilt a few weeks earlier during a walk in the Overvecht district. She received comments such as “Kaag and Jetten traitors!” to her head.
All D66 campaign staff in Utrecht received resilience training. Or at least an instruction on how to deal with unpleasant treatment on the street. Always remain friendly, Emma Dolmans has remembered. “I just offer that apple and wish the less interested people a nice day too.”
Biggest in poll
Apart from those confrontations on the street, party leader Maarten Koning is satisfied with the campaign two weeks before the elections. With an enthusiastic, relatively young and diverse club of candidates – average age is 32, and only four top-16 candidates are already on the board. With an intensive program of activities, from canvassing doors and flyers in the city center to up to 35 debates, which the party leader often consciously leaves to other candidates. And with, at least in the eyes of the local party leader, a lot of ‘positive response’ from ‘the voter’.
King can be satisfied with the first poll, which was conducted by the office of Maurice de Hond at the request of D66 Utrecht itself. It showed last week that his party will be the largest with 17 percent of the vote† Although that is considerably less than the 20.7 percent of D66 in 2018, the main goal of the party is to become the largest again.
In the 2018 municipal elections, D66 lost that position to the electoral arch-rival in the Dom city. GroenLinks won three seats and went to twelve; D66 lost three and ended up with ten seats. Those first elections after the formation of the Rutte III cabinet were quite disastrous for D66 throughout the country. As so often, and to the dismay of stakeholders in municipalities and provinces, local elections are often a popularity survey about The Hague’s politics.
The Rutte III coalition agreement contained measures that were difficult for progressive-liberal voters to digest. The scrapping of the advisory referendum and the proposed abolition of the dividend tax drove many potential D66 supporters into the arms of GroenLinks, PvdA and the Party for the Animals.
Maarten Koning is reassured that the agreements of the new coalition, of the same four parties as Rutte III, are not getting in the way of his campaign. “I believe that the people of Utrecht in general are happy with the new cabinet. And D66 members in particular are happy with the content of the coalition agreement. Kaag and Jetten did that well.”
Reclaiming the first position in the council will also bring King’s second goal closer: to continue to manage in the city. Although Koning himself, who has been a councilor for eight years, does not want to become an alderman, but party leader.
The ambition of the party makes the election campaign in Utrecht interesting and complicated. D66 is now in the city council with GroenLinks (12 seats), a progressive council supplemented by the ChristenUnie. On the most important election theme, the liberals openly opposed the largest council partner: the plans for the development of the Rijnenburg polder, 10 kilometers southwest of the city center.
While the majority of the municipal council – also in the presumed new composition – is in favor of building houses on this immense triangular piece of land between Nieuwegein, IJsselstein and the A12, the Municipal Executive, on the intercession of GroenLinks, decided in November 2020 that the will not be built in Rijnenburg in the next fifteen years. For the existing housing shortage – the student city of Utrecht has a shortage of about 60,000 houses – construction sites must be found within the city limits. GroenLinks wants to use the polder for sustainable energy supply and recreation.
Houses and windmills
At the end of January, a week after the election campaign kicked off, Maarten Koning presented his own plan for Rijnenburg. In spite of the council agreement, D66 wants to have 25,000 to 40,000 houses built there, much more than was stated in the original local building plans. A third of that should be social housing. The construction of the first 2,500 houses must start as soon as possible, according to D66†
The ambitious plan entails even more: eight large windmills are to be built in the northern part of the polder, where the soil is soggy. There will be a new competition rowing course, the poisonous Nedereindse Plas will be cleaned up and a tram connection with the city will be established.
D66 also wants to speed up the development of Rijnenburg because the new cabinet has 7.5 billion euros ready to kick-start mobility in fourteen so-called ‘urbanization areas’. “We have to be quick about that,” says Koning.
“It is not the first time that D66 has made a turn just before the elections,” GroenLinks party leader Julia Kleinrensink reacts piqued. She is King’s great rival. “In 2014, they suddenly had a different point of view about installing a windmill in Lage Weide, because that worked out well from an electoral point of view.”
VVD party leader Marijn de Pagter also sees a turn of D66, but reacts positively: “What a surprising turn, I thought. I immediately welcomed them to team Rijnenburg!” At the next council meeting, he promptly submitted a motion to record D66’s new position. De Pagter asked for quick steps to start building houses at IJsselstein. To his surprise, D66 voted against. Until the elections, the party is still bound by the coalition agreements with GroenLinks.
‘Rijnenburg’ will soon be the major bottleneck for the formation of a new college. With three different positions of the three sides vying to become the biggest. The VVD wants to build there and not windmills (but solar panels). GroenLinks does not want to build, but only windmills. D66, like PvdA, is somewhere in between.
‘Righter than the CDA’
While party leader Sigrid Kaag long argued for a cabinet that was as progressive as possible after the parliamentary elections in 2021, Maarten Koning in Utrecht is opening the door with his new plan for Rijnenburg for a city council with the VVD. So clockwise, although one or two parties will certainly be needed for a majority coalition.
In recent years, D66 enthusiastically steered with GroenLinks. Koning now wants to get voters away from both VVD and GroenLinks. VVD party leader De Pagter detects shrewd opportunism. “D66 calls out attractive things for the right-wing voter as well as for the left in this campaign.” From the local Electoral Compass, D66 came out as less progressive than GroenLinks and more right-wing than the CDA. To the shock of the leader. “We did call the people behind Stemwijzer, yes, what exactly that is based on.” Koning says he wants to profile himself as “a constructive middle party”. He sees both GroenLinks and the VVD as potential coalition partners. And also as a competitor. In the last few weeks, D66 will focus on neighborhoods where these parties are popular: Leidsche Rijn, where many VVD voters live, and East, around the chic Wilhelmina Park, where GroenLinks has a following. “It’s about becoming the biggest,” says Koning. “Then we can take the lead after March 16.”
Already at the start of the campaign, during a teambuilding outing at the end of January in the Utrecht district of Overvecht, the top-16 of the D66 list is remarkably optimistic about this. If everyone manages to amass at least a thousand votes, party leader Koning promises, “we will eat in a star tent.” With some bravado, the experienced number 2 on the list Susanne Schilderman, then opens her improvised pep talk as follows: „We are just going to get sixteen seats, people. Yeah!” She closes with some serious advice. After the busy campaign weeks, she says, relatively little happens on election day itself. Then get some rest, says Schilderman. Take a shower, take a walk, take a nap. On the results evening, until deep into the night, all kinds of things come at you again. But, she warns, keep one thing in mind during those dead hours: “Don’t forget to vote yourself!” Important for the result and for the candidates themselves. “It just gives a kick to make the box in front of your own name red.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 5 March 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of March 5, 2022
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