Michael Kuffer, 49, (CSU) comes to the Großmarkthalle restaurant in a Vespa despite the autumnal weather. “It was pretty zapfig,” says the tall man in a gray suit. It is late morning and more and more guests are pouring into the wood-paneled room to have a traditional white sausage breakfast, which of course includes a wheat beer. Kuffer orders cappuccino and pretzels with butter. How is he with this election campaign, which is not really getting going, which has been dominated for weeks by alleged and real misconduct by the top candidates, by plagiarism and giggles?
“For someone like me, who likes political disputes, it’s hard to bear at the moment,” says Kuffer quietly, looking around the economy. “The leadership of the CDU has decided to run a trench election campaign, as have our competitors. Everyone believes: If you take cover, you lose. I think that’s wrong.”
The party colleagues nominated Kuffer in the spring with 95.5 percent approval again as a direct candidate for the Bundestag in the south of Munich. There they seem to like the attack department: For many years Peter Gauweiler (CSU) was the directly elected member of the Bundestag. He was followed in 2017 by Kuffer, who had attracted attention as an entertaining speaker in Munich City Hall in previous years, but who was also accused of unnecessarily polarizing by political competition.
He has earned his reputation as an agitator and provocateur, among other things, with the demand for an armed municipal security service and a so-called Angstraum reporter for the city. Why the cabaret artist Christian Springer denigrated the politician Kuffer in his strong beer speech in 2017 as “Rathaus-Rommel”.
“I would have expected more intelligent things from Christian Springer than such a stupid Nazi comparison,” says Kuffer today. He has always fought against extremism throughout his political career. “I think that I don’t fit into a drawer so easily,” says Kuffer, and continues: “I don’t just know law and order in traditional jackets.”
In the federal election four years ago, Kuffer won by almost ten percent over SPD competitor Sebastian Roloff. This time it could be a lot tighter. The Greens hope to be able to steal one or more direct mandates from the CSU in Munich. Kuffer believes: “It will now be a short, intense election campaign that will be decided in the last few meters.”
He has to fight – he doesn’t have a secure place on the list. But how does an election campaign like this work in the pandemic, where you have to keep your distance? “We thought for a long time whether we should dare to campaign on the doorstep,” says Kuffer. “Honestly, I tended to say no.” But the CSU has had good experiences with it in other constituencies. So Kuffer’s team decided on it too. “People are really happy to accept that,” says Kuffer, who seeks to be close to the voters. You just have to design it in such a way “that we leave people their hygienic comfort zone”.
It is similar with information booths in marketplaces, because you cannot rush towards people like in the past. “It’s just all a bit more defensive in this election campaign,” says the CSU candidate – and means both: dealing with the voters and the political dispute.
“We can’t evacuate all of Afghanistan now if we don’t want to become Afghanistan ourselves.”
In the Bundestag, Kuffer, who is a member of the Committee on Home Affairs and Home Affairs as a lawyer, is a diligent speaker. “During the first two years of the legislative period, I sometimes spoke three to four times a week,” he says proudly. His topics were in demand: skilled workers immigration law, citizenship law, asylum, border controls, rejections and the like.
“2018 was a hot summer, in which I was not entirely uninvolved,” says Kuffer, who wants a “fair distribution formula for persons entitled to asylum in Europe”. “But that only works if we are very consistent at the EU’s external borders and only distribute those whose asylum applications have a chance of success,” says the CSU man. “The best solution would be to clarify on site on the continent of origin whether the people have a perspective or not.”
Does he expect more refugees from Afghanistan in the future? “Of course the problem will come up to us. We now have to get out those who helped us and were endangered as a result. I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that we let them down,” says Kuffer. “But: We can’t evacuate all of Afghanistan now if we don’t want to become Afghanistan ourselves.”
Kuffer is convinced that politics needs types who dare to offend, who do not base their political action solely on excluding any criticism as far as possible. “I always risked a big lip and got beaten for it,” he says. “I can’t imagine politics any other way.” For him, it’s not about a riot, but about acting politically as a politician and not like an official.
Bundestag election in Munich CSU candidate for the Munich-South constituency
To the video article
To the video article
(Video: Southgerman newspaper
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The CSU man tries to differentiate himself from the Greens by denying them “bourgeoisie” and accusing them of ideologically patronizing people – especially on the climate issue – and wanting to intervene in every area of their lives. The CSU, on the other hand, is trying to change direction by making offers to people, for example promising more subways for Munich and generous cycle paths like in Amsterdam. Kuffer says: “I want us to turn climate protection into a citizens’ movement and that it doesn’t remain an elite project for those who can afford it.” Kuffer’s constituency is complex, it ranges from Solln, where he lives with his four children, to Giesing.
It is no secret that the campaigner CSU leader Markus Söder would have liked to be the Union’s candidate for chancellor. He campaigned for him in Berlin. Now things have turned out differently: Armin Laschet is at the top. And Söder demands at the joint election campaign of both parties: “Let’s finally do a sensible election campaign.” Kuffer says: “If none of the big politicians help us, then we have to help ourselves. I’m working on that now.”
A few days ago someone wrote on his Facebook page: “Michi, will anyone still want to go to the beer garden after the election? With this candidate for Chancellor, where the values are falling more and more, the beer garden will be done for.” Kuffer is confident: “I hope that we still have reason to celebrate after September 26th. But also when things go bad: the beer garden always works.”
Michael Kuffer in the video self-portrait: