Somewhere out there is sure to be a boy who, just before going to bed, throws a languid look at the poster on the wall, at the image of his idol, and thinks: “Mei, Markus, one day I want to be like you and achieve what you have achieved. ” Chairman of the CSU, Bavarian Prime Minister, eternal thorn in the flesh of the CDU. And at some point maybe even more – the first Bavarian to belong to the CSU in the Chancellery.
This goal has remained denied to the man who once hung as a poster above the bed of the youthful Markus Söder. In 1980, the posterboy Franz Josef Strauss returned to Bavaria defeated after the federal election and became again what Söder is today, but because of his own ego certainly does not want to stay forever: Prime Minister. In two years (yes, that’s how long Söder can take it with Aiwanger) the Bavarians will elect a new state parliament; an election that Söder will have to win if the candidate for chancellor is to become something in 2025.
Thinking too far ahead? Not at all. And these mind games should also go through the minds of some in the district. Ernst Weidenbusch, for example, still a member of the state parliament for the northern district and for some time also president of the Bavarian Hunting Association; qua office so someone who pays close attention to who is running at him. On the one hand, of course, from the competition that threatened him in the state elections three years ago in the person of the Greens Markus Büchler, but of course also from his own camp. Because it cannot be ruled out that a younger (or younger) party might hunt down the hunter and try to dispute his mandate. That is in the nature of things, especially in a party that – as strange as it may sound in these times – has given itself the title “new” under its party leader.
And then there is the previously undisputed member of the state parliament from the southern constituency: Kerstin Schreyer, Bavaria’s building minister, who can undoubtedly be described as an absolute anchor of stability and a firm bench in Söder’s cabinet. But even Schreyer had to realize in the last state election that winning direct mandates for the CSU in the district will no longer be an absolute matter of course in the future. Or as she put it herself in 2018: “We got away with it with a black eye.”
In the CSU, too, a lot will be in motion in the near future, with new faces pushing forward – and displacing old ones. That is part of the essence of a party. Very few people will have the bouquet hanging over their bed at all. And how long will the Söder hang there? Until a fresher face will warm the hearts of the youngsters of the party.