Cham: Miraculous increase in members among the free voters – Bavaria

The Free Voters like to emphasize that they are not like the other established parties – hence the name. A non-party, so to speak. We are supposedly dealing with free people who make politics for the little people and are not subjugated by party statutes and internal party power struggles – at least at the municipal level. One can assume that most free voters have a party allergy. This is the only way to explain the following special feature: You can be a member of a local or district association, but you don’t have to be a party member to do so.

In Cham in the Upper Palatinate there was even a mayor of the Free Voters who was active in the district association but refused to be a party member. For higher consecrations, however, the party book is necessary. For example, if you want to run for the state parliament – or if you want to vote for the FW state parliament candidate.

It is all the more astonishing – or obvious – that shortly before Christmas, around 40 people in the Cham district association became true party members. 40 new members is a high number insofar as the entire district association has 800 members and only about 150 of them also have a FW party book.

A campaign vote by the free voters to select the direct candidate for the state elections recently took place in Cham. If one believes the words of the deputy district chairman Hans Kraus, then some brand new party books were decisively responsible for the fact that it was not the 29-year-old district chairman Christian Schindler, as usual and suggested by him, who ran for the candidacy, but a certain Julian Preidl from Bad Kötzting.

Julian Preidl won thanks to his circle of supporters.

(Photo: private)

Party quarrels: Christian Schindler, the defeated candidate in the freestyle.

Christian Schindler, the defeated candidate in the freestyle.

(Photo: private)

Coincidentally, the new members are from his area, they all joined just a few weeks before the vote. “One can assume that these votes were decisive for the outcome of the election,” says Kraus. It was a tight box: Preidl, 27 years young, won the race with 62 to 54 votes.

“It’s give and take,” says the winner

He had previously solicited supporters. “I’m not running around with the party book now,” says Preidl. But here everyone knows everyone, and he has been politically active for seven years. “It’s a give and take, and then some just got over themselves to join the party.” His supporters are friends and “people close to him” who know him and his work well, says Preidl.

“That’s a legitimate approach, but it’s not the fine English way,” says his opponent Schindler. “That’s not my way of doing politics.” And in fact, such a procedure of targeted voter acquisition is more familiar from the CSU. Even the successful member recruiter Preidl says so himself: “I’m thinking of many a government party that distributes the beer brands to the people in the beer tent.” But his actions have nothing to do with that. “I haven’t stolen anything here.” He worked hard to win people’s approval.

The defeated Schindler has that too. In the last federal election he got the best result of a free voter in Germany. But he obviously couldn’t mobilize his supporters like that. Hans Kraus describes Preidl’s approach as “highly borderline”. The state returning officer has now confirmed that new members do not have to wait until they can nominate candidates. They just need to be confirmed members on the day of the vote.

But Preidl has shifted the majority, says Kraus. Possibly in such a way that they no longer correspond to the actual will of the voters. “Many in the association are shocked and feel exposed.” And how does Schindler feel? He has to let that sink in first, he says. “That has already left its mark.” But there is one good thing about the whole thing: “An increase in membership is still great in general.” And above all, something special in a Janus-faced institution, whose supporter Vice District Chief Kraus describes as follows: “The free voter does not like to identify himself with the party and would rather remain independent.”

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