SPD candidate for chancellor: Who does Olaf Scholz trust?

String pullers, spin doctors, SPD strategists: Who are the people who work in the background for Chancellor Scholz? Who can he rely on – who does he even let himself get to?

Olaf Scholz worked for a long time towards his candidacy for chancellor, but not alone. The Social Democrat is not only supported as Vice Chancellor and Finance Minister by a hyper-loyal small circle of long-time confidants. Although some of his companions point out: He doesn’t need real consultants at all – Scholz is actually enough for himself in strategy and analysis.

Wolfgang Schmidt

The 50-year-old social democrat, ex-lawyer and state secretary in the finance ministry is the opposite of his employer, who often seems a bit closed-off: communicative, lively, clever. But above all, more than convinced of working for the best. Accordingly, he considers Scholz to be the best conceivable candidate for Chancellor and the only one who has Merkel’s collar size – like Scholz himself.

Their political biographies have been closely interwoven for almost 20 years. Lawyer Schmidt, who started as a consultant in the SPD general secretary’s office in Scholz, quickly grew into the political partner role: Wherever Scholz was, Schmidt is there: in the Willy Brandt House, in the Bundestag, in the Labor Ministry and later in the Ministry of Finance – and of course also in Hamburg, when the SPD politician acted as first mayor.

Schmidt is involved in the financial policy issues, as well as the Vice Chancellor’s votes, especially in the corona pandemic. And he not only diligently supports Scholz’s candidacy for chancellor as an image polisher. His mission: to get the brittle Hanseatic man into the Chancellery (and probably at the same time as head of the Chancellery). To do this, he uses his mouthpiece Twitter day and night to promptly point out Scholz’s successes – sometimes at two in the morning. Successes of the finance minister are praised and promoted, but increasingly also “good news” about Scholz as candidate for chancellor of the SPD.

Stripper, State Secretary for Finance and Spin-Doctor Wolfgang Schmidt: is considered by many to be Scholz’s closest confidante.

Image: BMF / Thomas Koehler / photothek.net

But the internationally networked Schmidt is more than a pure PR man in the background and a spin doctor, he is a shrewd puller. Of course, he knows about the two currently most difficult points of attack and Achilles verses of his candidate – on the one hand as federal minister in the financial scandal involving the German financial services provider Wirecard and in the Hamburg cum-ex scandal, which still fell during his time as mayor and him most recently after research by NDR and “Die Zeit” does not appear in a good light.

Regardless of whether they are members of the Bundestag or journalists who deal with it in more detail and report unfavorable facts, you can be sure of Schmidt’s attention and comments via Twitter or on the phone. He does not shy away from looking for a direct line to the editor-in-chief in such matters.

Fabio de Masi, Hamburg’s Bundestag member of the Left Party and chairman of the Wirecard investigative committee, fought real factual battles with him on the Cum-Ex and Wirecard affair on Twitter. De Masi also reported to the “Handelsblatt” that Schmidt had offered him a deal by telephone in the summer of 2020 to release sensitive information on the Wirecard process more quickly if the opposition waived the appointment of a parliamentary committee of inquiry into Wirecard.

For Scholz and his confidants, the summer of 2020 was a particularly sensitive time because the nomination as SPD candidate for chancellor by the SPD party leadership around Scholz’s former antipodes Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans was imminent. Schmidt and Scholz could not use bad news for internal party reasons.

State Secretary Rolf Bösinger: Supports Scholz more in the background – as an experienced SPD man and financial policy expert.

Image: picture alliance / Sebastian Wil

Rolf Bösinger

State Secretary Rolf Bösinger acts much less publicly than Schmidt in Scholz’s environment. The 55-year-old still belongs to the closest circle of Scholz confidants and combines many years of SPD experience from inner circles and important phases of the SPD in the Berlin Republic with expertise in economic and financial policy.

Under Mayor Scholz, the business and finance expert was initially appointed head of the Hamburg Senate Chancellery and later as State Councilor for Economy and Innovation. He previously also worked in important departments of the Willy Brandt House – when Scholz was SPD General Secretary there and Chancellor Schröder had to sell the “Hartz IV” agenda – which became an internal ordeal for social democracy.

Other Scholz confidants in the ministry include the finance state secretaries and social democrats Werner Gatzer and Jörg Kukieswho advise him primarily on financial policy. As a younger strategic-intellectual head, the finance minister still placed Benjamin Mikfeld in the ministry as department head of the important department “Management, Planning, Strategy”. The social scientist Mikfeld already held similar positions in the Willy Brandt House and later with Andrea Nahles in the SPD-led Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs.

Britta Ernst

Although it is not to be expected with a political couple other than that they advise each other professionally: Scholz’s wife Britta Ernst, who comes from Hamburg and with whom he has been childless since 1998, is considered in SPD circles as a far above expected role as an important advisor for Scholz.

A political companion says about the graduate social economist, who is now education minister in Brandenburg and already worked in the same function in Schleswig-Holstein from 2014 to 2017: The 60-year-old works like her husband, is just as meticulous and willing to control as he would So rather strengthen and support your political style than question it.

Ernst joined the SPD at a young age and concentrated early on in various positions on school policy, initially as a member of the Hamburg Parliament – from which she resigned in 2011 despite a mandate – when Scholz became mayor there.

Steffen lifting dispute

According to “Welt”, the former journalist (“Frankfurter Rundschau”, “DuMont”) is well connected – and after an intermediate step he joined Olaf Scholz as spokesman for SPD general secretary Katarina Barley: initially in 2015 as head of the Hamburg state representation in Berlin – this is said to have been done on the recommendation of Wolfgang Schmidt. After Scholz was appointed Minister of Finance in 2018, the political scientist moved into the ministry as press spokesman. In addition to the networker and State Secretary Schmidt, the 49-year-old is considered to be Scholz’s transmission belt to the media.

Due to his impressive height alone, he sometimes looks like a protector of Scholz. In interview recordings, he physically positions himself between Scholz and the camera and waves it away – like one would ARD-Team on sensitive issues about Cum-Ex happened.

The former is one of the few women in the “Team Scholz” that is gaining in importance RBB-Journalist Julia Camerer, who has acted as spokeswoman for the candidate for chancellor in the Willy Brandt House since December 2020. Before that, she was in her mid-forties as a press officer for the SPD parliamentary group.

Lars Klingbeil

The more concrete and probable Scholz’s candidacy for chancellor became, the more important the role of SPD general secretary and campaign leader Lars Klingbeil in the “Team Scholz” became. In this function, the 43-year-old Klingbeil has earned a great deal of respect within the party after many unsuccessful SPD years by being able to grind down the image of disagreement. Now only the poll numbers have to follow suit – but Klingbeil relies entirely on Scholz, whose personal poll numbers clearly outshine his party.

In terms of party strategy, both argue congruently and think similarly. The party must learn from mistakes, appear more cohesive – at least outwardly – and above all: radiate new confidence – away from the image of the quarreling lamenting party. They rely on the Vice Chancellor’s national political experience in competition with Armin Laschet and Annalena Baerbock and hope to be able to increasingly play this card towards election day.

Klingbeil belongs to the central, pragmatic and business-oriented “Seeheimer Kreis” of the SPD, which supported Agenda 2010 in the Schröder years – and publicly spoke out in favor of Scholz as a candidate for Chancellor in June 2020, well before Esken was officially nominated and Walter-Borjans.

SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz is today in the ARD summer interview questioned. The conversation and the interactive question format Ask yourself! can be seen from 2.30 p.m. in the live stream at tagesschau.de.