It is a result that, in its clarity, says a lot about the mood in the Ahrweiler district. Six months after the devastating floods in which 134 people died in the district, the independent candidate Cornelia Weigand was elected the new district administrator on Sunday. She got 50.2 percent of the votes right away and was thus chosen directly in the first ballot as the new district administrator for a region whose reconstruction will be a huge task. Many people are traumatized, many houses have to be rebuilt.
A runoff between her and the CDU candidate, Horst Gies, was expected in the district. But in the end he had no chance. Weigand, the mayor of the municipality of Altenahr, enjoys a high reputation in the region because she reacted quickly after the flood, organized help and urged rapid help from the federal and state governments.
So far, the CDU has always dominated in this district in recent decades. But the previous CDU District Administrator Jürgen Pföhler was retired at his own request in the fall. He was heavily criticized for his crisis management after the flood, and the Koblenz public prosecutor is investigating him. It is being investigated why the district was warned late about the flood six months ago. There is a suspicion that lives could have been saved if there had been an earlier warning. Pföhler has led the district since 2000, when he was last re-elected he received 75 percent of the votes, actually there would only have been another election in 2023.
On Sunday, his party friend Gies, who was nominated as his successor by the CDU, ended up far behind the election winner Weigand. The CDU member of parliament received 28.2 percent of the votes. In third place was Christoph Schmitt, the Social Democrat had competed as a non-partisan candidate. The desire for a new beginning was also expressed in the voter turnout. It was 48.1 percent and thus significantly higher than in 2015, when less than 30 percent of the voters cast their votes.