With a large majority, the citizens of the small Saxon town of Großschirma elected AfD member of the state parliament Rolf Weigand as mayor. The 39-year-old received 59.4 percent of the vote in the first round of voting on Sunday. Interest in the election was extremely high: turnout was almost 74 percent. Weigand ran as an individual candidate against two other candidates. He was an AfD man from the very beginning, joined the party in 2013 and has been a member of the Saxon state parliament since 2018. Only as a replacement, since 2019 as a directly elected representative. Since 2019 he has also sat on the district council of the Central Saxony district and on the city council of Groß Schirma (5,500 inhabitants).
Weigand ran for mayor for the second time; in 2018 he was defeated by FDP man Volkmar Schreiter. His suicide last fall made the early mayoral election necessary. In one long report reported the Free Presse a few weeks agohow much Schreiter had suffered from hostility from the AfD.
Elections will take place in September in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg
Weigand, who studied and received his doctorate at the Freiberg Mining Academy, also ran for the office of district administrator in 2022 and received 24.5 percent from the standings. Of the Saxon newspaper When asked at the time about his reading, he mentioned “1984” by George Orwell. The SPD member of the Bundestag Detlef Müller called the result of the election on Sunday shameful and that it stunned him.
The AfD won a mayoral position for the first time in Pirna, Saxony, in December. The independent Tim Lochner ran on the AfD ticket and took office last week. The AfD has a district administrator in Sonneberg, Thuringia, and the mayor in Raguhn-Jeßnitz in Saxony-Anhalt. In surveys for the state elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg in September, the AfD is clearly ahead. Before that, local elections will take place in nine federal states, including all of the eastern states. In Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies the AfD as definitely right-wing extremist.