On Sunday, the Liberals named Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann as the top candidate for the European elections. Three reasons why this can work well – and two reasons why it doesn’t.
She knows how much love liberals can give. How it feels when the crowd claps, stands up and doesn’t want to stop cheering. In May 2022, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann was the celebrated star of an FDP party conference in Berlin. Christian Lindner was canceled and was stuck in a hotel room in Washington with corona. She gave a speech in favor of supporting Ukraine with weapons. And what a.
“Don’t hesitate, don’t hesitate, that’s the order of the day,” Strack-Zimmermann shouted into the hall, which had to be understood as a request to the hesitant Chancellor. Almost two years later, the chairwoman of the Defense Committee has not become more popular among the Chancellor. “Wow, the old woman is annoying,” an influential advisor to Olaf Scholz is said to have recently said about her. Strack-Zimmermann took that as a compliment. She is now 65. And still far from finished.
She is now finally the woman of hope in the FDP. A grande dame who is supposed to achieve great things. On Sunday she will give another speech in the hall at Berlin’s Gleisdreieck Park. The crowd will clap again, stand up and never want to stop cheering. Christian Lindner will then be at your side. He will withdraw. It is her coronation mass alone.
Strack-Zimmermann is leading the FDP as the top candidate in the European elections in June. It is intended to steer the traffic light-plagued Liberals back onto the path to success. Can that succeed? Three reasons for – and two against.
Strack-Zimmermann is well known
People know them. And that alone is worth a lot in a European election. In just a decade and at a time in life when others are looking forward to retirement, Strack-Zimmermann has carved out a remarkable political career. She once did her doctorate on ZDF reporting on the USA. Worked as a self-employed publishing representative and raised three children. She was involved in local politics for a long time and was mayor of her hometown Düsseldorf when Christian Lindner brought her into the party leadership in 2013.
When the FDP came back in 2017, she was elected to the Bundestag and began to delve into defense policy. Arms exports and procurement. War and peace. A few amusing appearances on the “heute show” followed. She tapped her way into the consciousness of the politically interested public: Wait a minute, in the FDP, in addition to Lindner and Kubicki, there is now also this woman with the white quiff of hair…
But she only became a familiar face on the Tagesschau with her commitment to Ukraine. To this day, only a few people are as passionate about arms deliveries to Ukraine as she is. She said last year that what was happening there was so dramatic star told. “And we’re sitting here, if you may say so, with our butts in the warmth and discussing and discussing.”
Strack-Zimmermann is a guy
It’s sentences like these that make her valued, and not just in her party. Strack-Zimmermann can be loud, she can be cheeky, she can even be vulgar at times. “The shit is blowing in Germany and Europe. You don’t pee in your own nest,” she complains about the traffic light resisters at the party base, who launched a member survey at the end of the year.
At a time when politicians sand down, hide and cover up their rough edges, Strack-Zimmermann maintains her image as a real Rhenish type. She doesn’t have to do much about it, she just stays as she always was – with all the opportunities and risks.
She definitely reflects that. Of course not everyone could be like Wolfgang Kubicki and her, Strack-Zimmermann once said. Just like in a company, in a party it’s also about: Who keeps the business together internally? And who do you have in sales? “There are colleagues who love thinking about programs and writing applications for hours. I’m not an ant tattoo artist. I’m a sales person. I can explain a topic to people and possibly convince them.”
That is exactly what the FDP will be betting on in this election campaign. If Strack-Zimmermann can’t explain and convince why Europe is more important than ever in these times of crisis – well, who can?
Strack-Zimmermann can motivate
The FDP doesn’t like to think back to the 2019 European election campaign. Who likes to remember a disaster? The campaign had everything you couldn’t use. A candidate who was unpopular in the party. A campaign that didn’t take off. And the combination creates a mood in which no one is happy to promote liberal politics in pedestrian zones.
With Strack-Zimmermann the opposite can be achieved. The campaign can be easily tailored to a popular candidate. And the combination could bring back something that most liberals have lost in two years of the traffic light coalition: a real desire for politics.
Many in the FDP long to finally have the feeling of being part of a successful party again. Nobody wants to fight for the losers forever. Strack-Zimmermann understood that. The cheekiest passages in her speeches ultimately served one main goal: to motivate, motivate, motivate. “We need less von der Leyen and more freedom,” she said at Epiphany in Stuttgart. This is not yet a political program, but it will stick.
All of this speaks for their success. Still, it won’t be easy.
Strack-Zimmermann scares regular voters
Rhetorically, Strack-Zimmermann is sometimes 100 meters ahead of the front, say party friends, but is always heading in the right direction – with a few exceptions. At Carnival, for example, Strack-Zimmermann mocked CDU leader Friedrich Merz as a “flying dwarf.” Your party leader apparently didn’t like that. This is also why some in the FDP speculated that Lindner might reconsider whether he really wanted to nominate a top candidate who would polarize and sometimes overstep the mark.
He wants. But that doesn’t dispel the doubts. One ill-considered sentence too many, one casual saying for the wrong occasion – you don’t have to call Armin Laschet to find out how quickly a promising campaign can get into a negative spiral. Merz’s shock quickly turns into voter shock, especially in the middle-class core milieu of his own supporters: “Wow, the old woman is annoying.”
In addition, many people associate Strack-Zimmermann solely with her commitment to supplying weapons to Ukraine. She was also able to score points with supporters of the Greens and the CDU. The question remains whether they will vote for the candidate with the longest name on the ballot paper. However, among many craftsmen, classic self-employed people who often and happily vote for the FDP, support for Ukraine aid is crumbling in view of the federal government’s austerity measures. Strack-Zimmermann will also have to deal with this.
Strack-Zimmermann will not solve all of the FDP’s problems
In general, the federal government. In the best case scenario, Strack-Zimmermann will be able to change the sound of the FDP in the coming months, and in the best case scenario he will be able to spread a better mood and liberal enthusiasm for the future. But it won’t be able to completely drown out the constant background noise: the arguments at traffic lights, the complaining in the party, the criticism from the media.
One should remember once again how poorly the FDP managed to mobilize its own supporters last time – from a better starting position than today. The FDP was in opposition in the 2019 European elections. She didn’t have to justify anything except her own successes and misfortunes. Nevertheless, it was only enough for an election result of 5.4 percent and five seats in parliament. In surveys at the time it was 7 to 9 percent. Currently it only comes to 4 to 6. The rest is crisis mathematics.
Yes, Strack-Zimmermann is the FDP’s hopeful. But there isn’t much more hope right now.