CSU party leader Markus Söder will present a new general secretary this Friday. On Friday morning it became apparent that a member of the CSU parliamentary group could come into play. In the parliamentary group, Martin Huber from Mühldorf in Upper Bavaria is the favourite. Söder recently commissioned him to develop a new policy for the party. However, the CSU boss is always good for surprises. The earliest there will be certainty is when Söder calls the party executive at 10.30 a.m. for a video switch. At 11 a.m. he wants to inform the public. Until recently, Michaela Kaniber was considered a candidate who was mentioned particularly often, but the Minister of Agriculture apparently has no interest, as CSU circles say.
The parliamentary group is the Prime Minister’s power base, but Söder’s relationship with MPs has seen better days. A peace signal through the appointment of a general secretary from among them – that would make sense for Söder in view of the difficult state election campaign in 2023. The CSU state group in the Bundestag says that they are preparing for the fact that there will be no Berlin MP. Most recently, Thomas Silberhorn was traded.
Martin Huber is spokesman for the CSU’s environment working group – he was already dealing with green issues before Söder had revealed his passion for it. “We have to make it clear again that the environment and ecology are core issues for our party,” said Huber in a 2018 SZ interview. Huber is currently writing – together with his parliamentary colleague Gerhard Hopp – on the new basic program of the CSU. Party friends praise that he is “analytically in a good mood”. Söder has also publicly identified him as a talent: the authors of the basic program are “smart young people”.
The fact that he is very familiar with the inner workings of the CSU state leadership also speaks for Huber. From 2008 to 2013 he was the personal advisor to party leaders Erwin Huber and Horst Seehofer. The proximity to Seehofer was until the end a factor that could keep Söder from Huber’s appointment; on the other hand, the connection between Huber and Seehofer should no longer be too close, despite mutual respect. In 2013, Huber then entered the state parliament in the Altoetting constituency. In 2018 he defended his mandate with a comparatively sovereign 42 percent of the votes.
Personal electoral success was one of the criteria that Söder and others wanted to apply when looking for a new Secretary General. Huber also comes from the countryside, even from Upper Bavaria, which can be considered quite helpful: On Thursday, Ilse Aigner, head of the powerful CSU district association in Upper Bavaria, demanded in an interview that Mayer’s successor had to “represent the rural area”. Huber, says someone from the CSU who knows him well, combines “intellectual stature and down-to-earthness, the best of both worlds.” If Huber really got the job, says another CSU man, “the only thing he might still be missing would be the talk show experience.”