As the SPD’s top candidate in Hesse, Faeser wants to remain Minister of the Interior
Nancy Faeser has been Chairwoman of the Hesse SPD since November 2019 and Federal Minister of the Interior since December 2021
Source: dpa/Sebastian Gollnow
On Friday, Nancy Faeser is to explain whether she will run as the SPD’s top candidate in the state elections in Hesse on October 8. According to a media report, she wants to remain Federal Minister of the Interior in this case after consultation with Olaf Scholz.
NAncy Faeser will apparently stay on as Federal Minister of the Interior for the time being, even in the event of a top SPD candidate in Hesse. Faeser had agreed on this with Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), reported the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”.
In the event of a defeat in the state elections, Faeser should therefore remain in Berlin – and not go to Hesse as opposition leader. The party expects that Faeser would only move to Wiesbaden as prime minister. On Friday, the Hessian SPD chairwoman wants to explain her plans in Friedewald. It is considered certain that she will declare her top candidacy.
A spokesman for the SPD Hessen said on Monday evening when asked that it was “speculation”. On Friday, however, “a wise decision” will be made. A spokesman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior declined to comment on the report.
With the sentence “My heart is in Hesse” at a party conference last spring, Faeser fueled many of the expectations of the Hessian comrades. Since then, however, the 52-year-old has stubbornly avoided making a clear commitment to whether she also sees her political future in her home state. Before moving to Berlin, Faeser had been active in Hessian local and state politics since 1996 and was a member of the state parliament for 18 years.
There is a historical parallel to an approach such as that in the Faeser case. In 1995, the then 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. Kanther remained Minister of the Interior in Bonn, while Roland Koch took over the role of leader of the opposition in Hesse.
Almost all parties represented in the Hessian state parliament have already declared which top personnel they will use in the election campaign for the vote on October 8th – with the exception of the SPD and the Left Party. The Christian Democrats are entering the race with the incumbent Prime Minister, Boris Rhein. Economics Minister Tarek Al-Wazir wants to stand in for the Greens, who are currently co-governing.
An election victory for the SPD in Hesse is anything but certain due to the strong competition from the CDU and the Greens. In the most recent survey by Infratest Dimap from the end of October 2022, the Hesse SPD was 22 percent, five percentage points behind the CDU, which governs with the Greens (27 percent).