The social policy wing of the CDU wants Karl-Josef Laumann to become deputy federal chairman. The trained machine fitter has been North Rhine-Westphalia’s labor minister since 2017. Previously, among other things, he was parliamentary group leader in the state parliament, state secretary in the Federal Ministry of Health and, from 2005 to 2010, state labor minister.
According to information from South German newspaper The federal executive board of the Christian Democratic Workers’ Association (CDA) officially proposed Laumann as deputy CDU federal chairman on Saturday. He is now considered the most promising candidate to succeed Carsten Linnemann. Linnemann has to vacate his previous position as CDU deputy because of his appointment as general secretary.
Social politicians have so far only been very poorly represented in the CDU leadership. Party leader Friedrich Merz was vice president of the CDU’s Economic Council, and Linnemann was head of the SME and Economic Union for a long time. In their current roles, both Merz and Linnemann do not see themselves as representatives of one wing of the party, but rather as advocates for the entire spectrum of the party, but many still see an imbalance in the composition of the CDU leadership.
Dissatisfaction with NRW dominance in other state associations
“With Karl-Josef Laumann we are making a strong personnel offer to the CDU – he is the leading figure for employees and social justice in the Union,” said the deputy federal chairman of the CDA, Dennis Radtke, to the SZ. With Laumann as CDU vice-president, the Christian Democrats would have “the chance to make it clear to the outside world: We as the CDU are the last advocate for industrial workers and people with small and medium incomes.” If the CDU wants “the workers who were horrified by the traffic lights to end up with us in the upcoming elections and not with the AfD, then we must also have a corresponding offer.”
The 66-year-old Laumann has been at the head of the CDA since 2005. In the CDU he is currently only a simple member of the presidium. He struggled for a long time with himself as to whether he wanted to run as party vice-president. This was also because, like Merz and Linnemann, he comes from North Rhine-Westphalia and there is already resentment in other CDU state associations about the dominance of the NRW CDU.
The future CDU leadership will be elected at a federal party conference in Berlin at the beginning of May. In addition to the previous CDU vice-president Carsten Linnemann, Karin Prien (Schleswig-Holstein), Silvia Breher (Lower Saxony), Andreas Jung (Baden-Württemberg) and Michael Kretschmer (Saxony) are also deputy federal chairmen.