Within a few days, the foundation for a new candidacy had been laid, and now the incumbent has made it official: Boris Palmer wants to remain mayor of Tübingen.
The incumbent mayor of Tübingen, Boris Palmer (Greens), will run again in the mayoral elections in autumn. He confirmed this to the SWR.
According to Palmer, being mayor of Tübingen is the best office he can imagine. He fell in love with the city as a student 30 years ago and doesn’t want to leave.
68 percent approval in Tübingen?
He has data from a representative survey that he commissioned himself. According to Palmer, these show that 68 percent of the people in Tübingen are satisfied with their work. That is why he is confident that the appreciation for what has been achieved in Tübingen in recent years will carry over to the next election day.
This poll is one of the pillars of his candidacy. In addition, he received a lot of encouragement from the population – be it directly or via the Internet. There, Palmer supporters had opened a list in which supporters can register. Hundreds have already done so.
Citizens donated money to Palmer’s campaign
The second pillar of support for Palmer’s candidacy is a donation account that he opened himself last Monday. Citizens can deposit money for Palmer’s election campaign into this account. Support that he urgently needs, because a mayor election campaign in Tübingen costs around 100,000 euros. The sum came together in just six days. According to Palmer, what he is particularly pleased about is that there were no large donations, but that around 1,000 citizens made individual donations.
“That’s almost more important than the amount in euros – that so many people are using their money to ensure that I can compete again.”
Palmer no longer wanted to run for the Greens
The 49-year-old recently announced that he no longer wanted to run as a Green Party candidate in his city’s mayoral election in the fall – because of his possible expulsion from the party.
Palmer has repeatedly spoken disparagingly about migrants in recent years and has also angered the party with other provocations. Therefore, he is running a party exclusion procedure against him. Not a good prerequisite for a renewed candidacy for the Greens.
The party expulsion procedure against the mayor of Tübingen, Boris Palmer, has begun. The Landesgrünen have applied for the party’s expulsion. What’s next?
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Tübingen Greens determine mayor candidates by primary election
The dispute over Boris Palmer has divided the Greens, not only in Tübingen. The city association of the Tübingen Greens wanted to calm things down by choosing a candidate in a primary in the spring. Democratically legitimized. Unassailable. But for two weeks it has been clear: nothing will come of it. Palmer explained that he did not want to face the primary because the party’s exclusion process was against him. He could hardly let himself be nominated by a party that wanted to get rid of him.
Palmer runs as an independent candidate in Tübingen
Now he has taken the long-awaited second step and declared his independent candidacy. So there could well be two candidates with a green party book in the Tübingen mayoral election in the fall. One or one who has the party behind him. The mayor of the Weilheim district of Tübingen, Ulrike Baumgärtner, has already thrown her hat into the ring.
And Palmer as an independent Green, which of course many Greens continue to support. Because: At the state party conference in May, there was a clear majority for the party expulsion procedure against the difficult and therefore controversial mayor of Tübingen. But in Tübingen, the extremely successful mayor still has many supporters from the Greens and beyond.