Frontwoman of the SPD in the Hesse election campaign plus a giant ministry in Berlin – Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser will remain Federal Minister for the time being even if there is a top candidate in Hesse. According to information from the Social Democrat, the Süddeutsche Zeitung agreed with Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD). It is considered certain that she will declare her top candidate for the Hessian state election campaign. Even in the event of a defeat in the state elections in October, it is expected that Faeser will remain in Berlin – and only go to Wiesbaden if she can actually become prime minister there. This Friday, the social democrat wants to declare her candidacy at the Hesse summit.
The 52-year-old social democrat, who has been state chairwoman of the Hessian SPD since 2019 and Federal Minister of the Interior and Homeland since 2021, kept it open to the last as to whether she wanted to lead the election campaign in Hesse. In Berlin government circles and in the SPD, however, no one now expects Faeser to forgo the top candidacy.
As the leader of the opposition, she apparently does not want to go to Wiesbaden
The long-standing Hessian domestic politician is considered the only promising leader in her state association. At the traditional Hesse summit of the SPD, at which the Rhineland-Palatinate Prime Minister Malu Dreyer (SPD) will also appear, the state leadership wants to start the election campaign on Friday – with a delay, because the CDU and Greens have long since named their top candidates. It can be considered impossible that the preferred candidate Faeser will drop out at the last moment.
From Berlin’s point of view, however, the question of what Faeser will do if the SPD loses in the Hesse election is more important. In recent polls, the party was up to five percentage points behind the CDU. Even in the event of a defeat, however, Faeser apparently does not intend to become the leader of the opposition in the Hessian state parliament. She’s been there before. The interior politician has been in local and state politics since 1996 and has been a member of the state parliament for 18 years, including as leader of the opposition. The accusation that she is too good for state politics should therefore come to nothing from the Federal Interior Minister’s point of view. In addition, Olaf Scholz is said to want to avoid another cabinet reshuffle.
Many in the Hesse SPD should be relieved when Faeser finally declares her top candidacy. However, not everyone in the SPD parliamentary group is happy with the procedure that the interior minister has chosen. Because Faeser kept the question of her candidacy open for so long, no alternative candidacy was considered, some criticize.
Therefore, there is now no other way than your top candidate – with all the risks of the “Röttgen trap”. The CDU politician Norbert Röttgen was Federal Environment Minister in 2012 and ran as the top candidate in North Rhine-Westphalia. In the state election campaign, he left it vague as to whether or not he wanted to become opposition leader in Düsseldorf in the event of defeat. Röttgen lost the election – and also his ministerial post in Berlin. Chancellor Angela Merkel dismissed him.
But not everyone in Berlin believes that such a scenario will soon threaten Nancy Faeser. The minister has the chancellor’s full backing. And in the event that the Union attacks Faeser in the Bundestag because it would rather stay in Berlin than go back to Hesse, the SPD has already leafed through the history books. In 1995, the CDU interior minister, Manfred Kanther, was the top candidate in Hesse. The CDU was the strongest force in the state elections, but Kanther was not prime minister. Red-Green retained a majority at the time. And Kanther? Still continued as Minister of the Interior in Bonn.