As a former handball player, Katharina Schulze knows how to prepare a team for an important competition. So the group leader of the Greens in the Bavarian state parliament brought her party members very close to the stage, where everyone bent down, first put their heads together and then stretched up, shouting “Teeeeeeeam Bayern” with increasing volume. This is how the Munich Greens heralded the state election campaign at their city party conference on Monday evening in the Muffathalle, not quite 100 days before the date. There were exactly 97 until October 8th.
On that Sunday in autumn, the current leader of the opposition, Schulze, wants to take over government responsibility, which she confirmed together with her co-group leader and co-lead candidate Ludwig Hartmann. “Our country can no longer afford to be around geaiwangere for five more years,” said Schulze, thereby also formulating who she sees as the main opponent in the election campaign: Deputy Prime Minister Hubert Aiwanger and his Free Voters. In view of Aiwanger’s much-criticized speech at a demonstration in Erding, Schulze denied him and his party the ability to govern: “Representatives of the state have to strengthen democracy, not weaken it. They have to hold society together, not divide it.”
Regardless of the circumstances that CSU boss and Prime Minister Markus Söder has ruled out a government alliance with the Greens and the party is at a nationwide poll low, Schulze, Hartmann and the other seven direct candidates spread a lot of optimism in the Munich constituencies. They received support for the hot phase in campaigning for votes from two professors, who delivered arguments for the energy transition in short presentations. The handball player Schulze then tried to ensure the necessary fighting spirit.