Green Chancellor candidate: who is behind Baerbock?

Pullers, spin doctors, communities of convenience: Who are the people who work in the background for Chancellor candidate Baerbock? Who can she rely on – and who might she be missing?

Strangely enough, the Greens’ first female candidate for chancellor, of all people, surrounds a team of men, if you only look at her closest environment. Compared to her opponents Armin Laschet (CDU) and Olaf Scholz (SPD), Annalena Baerbock is a newcomer in top politics – and cannot fall back on staff that has grown over the years or “the one formative office manager” like Angela Merkel’s Beate Baumann.

Baerbock is described as a networker who has many contacts in the parliamentary group and party – and also maintains talks with experienced top Greens such as Claudia Roth. But in everyday political life, she is currently surrounded by experienced campaigners in the party headquarters who have known each other for many years.

Michael Scharfschwerdt

Michael Scharfschwerdt, a well-networked and campaign-experienced PR expert within the party, is one of the candidate’s closest confidants. He came to her side late in June – maybe too late, some say. If Baerbock had already called on him earlier together with the spokesman, who was also brought into the team late Andreas Kappler to be able to fall back, one or the other mistake Baerbock might have been avoidable. Not only because of their skills, but because the team was obviously too small for the two top candidates Baerbock and Habeck. The opposition party, which won 8.9 percent in the last federal election, has a correspondingly small budget – about a quarter of what the SPD has at its disposal during the election campaign. Structural overload – at least that’s what you always hear when asked how the Baerbock blunders could happen to the otherwise very professional party.

The 47-year-old head of marketing and communications for an international management consultancy from Saarland has a long, green past in the party leadership – and has long been a proven Baerbock fan. With her and her husband and PR consultant Daniel Holefleisch, who also worked longer in the party headquarters, binds him a friendship.

According to the Greens, it was clear for a long time that Scharfschwerdt wanted to campaign for Baerbock – regardless of the question of whether she would be candidate for chancellor. He and the party make it a point to emphasize this – apparently to avoid the impression of a rescuer who was subsequently called in or a change of strategy after Baerbock’s stumbled start as a candidate for chancellor.

With the graduate degree in geography, she brought back a proven campaign expert: When Angela Merkel first ran for Chancellor in 2005, he had overseen the election campaign of the then Green Top candidate and Foreign Minister Fischer. Between 2001 and 2013, he worked, among other things, as office manager for the then federal managing director Reinhard Bütikofer and later for the long-time party chairman Cem Özdemir, but also as head of PR at the federal executive board and coordinator of the German Green MPs in the European Parliament.

In 2013, the marathon runner switched to Joschka Fischer’s Berlin consulting firm, and later to his current employer, from whom he took leave for the Baerbock election campaign. There he is responsible for the tour of the candidate, who – apart from a few appointments together with Habeck – is traveling from city to city as a candidate for chancellor alone with a small team and tour bus during these weeks.

Andreas Kappler

Baerbock already knows the former RTL television journalist Andreas Kappler from her time as a member of the Bundestag when he was the spokesman for the parliamentary group – and trusts him. He also knows the inside of the party headquarters from previous work, and from 2012 was press spokesman for the then party leaders Claudia Roth and Cem Özdemir. From 2014 he was spokesman for the Green parliamentary group for the parliamentary group leaders Katrin Göring-Eckardt and Anton Hofreiter – he knows very well the very different temperaments of green top politics.

In the 2017 election campaign, Kappler was appointed the sole election campaign spokesman for the then green top duo Göring-Eckardt and Özdemir – and was long considered “their man”. The 42-year-old political and media professional also accompanied the Jamaica explorations afterwards.

This time, Kappler is not alone as an election campaign spokesperson: He supports the party strategist and spokeswoman who was brought to Berlin headquarters in 2018 Nicola Kabel. The law graduate was brought to the party headquarters at a time when it was still unclear whether Baerbock or Habeck would apply for the chancellery. While Kabel is more concerned with printed interviews, Kappler is responsible for television appearances and the Baerbock tour bus. This means that Kappler is acting much closer to the candidate for chancellor than cable during the election campaign.

Nicola Kabel is jointly responsible for the electoral strategy of the top duo, but is considered a close or even closest political confidante of Habeck in the green camp. The former journalist was already his spokeswoman during Habeck’s time as Minister for the Energy Transition, Agriculture, Environment and Rural Areas in Schleswig-Holstein.

Why she, as the immediate professional environment of Baerbocks, who describes herself to the Tagesspiegel “as a” bouncer and proofreader “- and like Baerbock likes to have everything under control, did not take a closer look at Baerbocks’ book and curriculum vitae in advance, remains an open question.

David Simon

David Simon is an essential source of impetus and supporter of Baerbock’s speeches, but also of Baerbock’s criticized book “Jetzt”. He also has many years of experience – and was already the office manager at Bütikofer, and later at Özdemir in the party headquarters. At that time he was the “Tagesspiegel” as the right hand of Özdemir.

The man in his mid-forties was brought into the office of the two party leaders and top candidates for an additional speaker for speeches and strategic planning during the hot phase of the election campaign. Previously, Simon was the office manager of Göring-Eckardt, the parliamentary group leader in the German Bundestag.

Another important thought leader for Baerbock is the sociologist Melanie Haaswho, like Kabel, has been working in the party headquarters since 2018 – as head of the “Program and Analysis” department.

Robert Heinrich

Robert Heinrich has also served both top candidates as their joint office manager since 2018. In the party he is considered to be a clever head – and belongs to the small, secretive circle that was involved in the decision to make Baerbock candidate for chancellor. In him, too, the two of them have an experienced election campaign manager for the Greens: from 2003 he was head of communications for the federal board for 15 years – he too is one of the confidants of long-time federal chairman Özdemir.

His tasks also include – together with Simon – the political coordination between the parliamentary group and the board. Before the latest personnel election campaign reinforcement in the green party headquarters, all the threads in the management of Baerbock and Habeck came together at the Leipzig-born man, be it in terms of time, or in terms of content – actually hardly possible. Those close to him describe his position as completely overloaded – this may also be the reason why more detailed reviews of Baerbock’s curriculum vitae slipped through on his desk.

Michael Kellner

Party manager, spin doctor, long-time head of the political strategy of the federal party – many titles can be found for the campaign-experienced political Green Federal Director Michael Kellner – his professionalism is also respected by political competitors, for example in the Adenauer House. It is an important political hinge for Baerbock towards the Bundestag as well as towards the green base.

He has been in this office since 2013 and has increasingly interpreted it as a politically active rather than just a serving role. A high additional media presence in general secretary rounds came in handy because the Greens do not have this party office. Whether the process of developing the new green policy program or several election campaigns – everything was co-directed by Kellner, who is part of the left wing of the party.

Now the 44-year-old from Thuringia is striving for his own parliamentary mandate: He is also said to have ambitions to chair a parliamentary group or even hold a government office – should the Greens be involved in the next government. Applying for a mandate in the Bundestag takes time: This may be the reason that he was not able to take care of the precautionary sifting through Baerbock’s curriculum vitae or book genesis in detail. That would also have been in his area of ​​responsibility – some party colleagues are surprised that he seldom comes into view when looking for responsibility.

The Chancellor candidate of the Greens, Annalena Baerbock, answers the questions in ARD summer interview for the Report from Berlin. The interview and the interactive question format Ask yourself! can be seen from 3:30 p.m. in the live stream at tagesschau.de.