Palmer and the Greens: Unbelievable

A Green against the Greens: Boris Palmer is running as an independent candidate in Tübingen – and is putting his party under pressure. Does she end up as a loser?

That was too much: A racist insult on Facebook, which Boris Palmer himself later described as ironic, burst in the middle of preparations for the state party conference in Baden-Württemberg in spring 2021. On the same weekend, the Greens decided with a large majority to initiate party exclusion proceedings. They had threatened to do so a year earlier; After all, it was not the first time that Palmer drew attention to himself nationwide with provocative statements.

This time it was too much for the Greens: “It’s not about isolated cases. We’re dealing with years of history and a long list of calculated slips and staged breaches of taboos,” said the Greens’ state chairmen at the time, Sandra Detzer and Oliver Hildenbrand year after the party convention decision, when the 33-page application for Palmer’s expulsion was ready. It was further said:

Palmer himself felt misunderstood, once again. However, he himself had pleaded for the procedure in order to create clarity.

And he gets support: 500 Greens have declared in an appeal that they do not agree with the exclusion process. They also refer to Palmer’s local political successes, for example in transport and climate protection policy, which have significantly reduced CO2 emissions in Tübingen, or with the packaging tax, which is intended to lead to more recycling.

The Greens in Tübingen have a long history of success and suffering in common with their most prominent representative. Therefore, some had hoped that he would face a specially decided primary election, which should bring peace to the Tübingen Greens, regardless of the result in April. But then Palmer first announced that he was not running for the Greens, only to declare his candidacy as an independent after a self-contracted poll and pledges from sponsors. It remains to be seen whether the Green primary election still makes sense with the only candidate so far, Ulrike Baumgärtner, the mayor of a Tübingen district.

The other parties in Tübingen are keeping a low profile. The CDU would have liked to win the nationally known pandemic officer Lisa Federle for a candidacy, but she would rather continue to work as a doctor.

The SPD in Tübingen will soon present a “convincing personality” as an alternative to Palmer, according to a statement. In view of the personnel situation, only a surprise candidate from outside comes into question, as can be heard from the party.

In the SPD, many had placed their hopes in Social Mayor Daniela Harsch, who canceled at the end of January. Harsch is in the special situation that she works directly with the mayor. “The city and the employees in the administration cannot be expected to expect the city leaders to campaign against each other for months,” says Harsch. She likes to be social mayor, and she will hold back during the election campaign because of the duty of neutrality.

She made her decision independently of Palmers: she always assumed that Palmer would compete. He is “a thoroughly political person, who I appreciate as such. But he is always impulsive and can offend people.”

How the prime minister sees it

Companions inside and outside the Green Party repeatedly describe Palmer as a highly intelligent, capable politician who often gets in his own way. Someone who wants to offend, but then complains about it when there are negative reactions.

Winfried Kretschmann, Germany’s only Prime Minister of the Greens, has always been meticulous about not commenting on the substance of the matter. He refers to the ongoing proceedings and to the fact that his role as head of government will not be separated from his Green membership in public. So does he let it be known that as a party member he has sympathy for the mayor of Tübingen? Some interpret it that way.

In terms of content, Kretschmann is often closer to Palmer than many Greens, who are still a partly left-wing party even in Baden-Württemberg, which is dominated by realpolitik. Even though Kretschmann sees that Palmer’s provocations often overshoot the mark, he still considers him a capable politician.

But Kretschmann also suspects that in the end there could only be losers: Palmer, if he wins the election again with a result that is poor by his standards – or even loses. The Greens in Tübingen, who are now competing against their former hope with a candidate who is not particularly promising. And the Greens in Baden-Württemberg as a whole, whose actual plan is to establish themselves all over the state and outstrip the CDU as the “state party”.

The Greens in Baden-Württemberg are now more strongly represented regionally and locally than they were a few years ago, and they also have a handful of mayors – but only two mayors: in Göppingen and Böblingen, no longer in Stuttgart or Freiburg. If, with Tübingen, a very green university town were to be lost, that would be another setback for the goal of becoming the “new Baden-Württemberg party,” as the Greens had proclaimed before the 2016 state elections.

How to proceed now

And the party exclusion procedure? It starts in March at the earliest. Palmer’s lawyer Rezzo Schlauch, himself a former mayoral candidate for the Greens in Stuttgart, blames the party for the delay, but may be applying for an extension of the deadline himself. So it could be months, maybe even until the election in Tübingen in October or beyond.