Federal Minister of the Interior and Hesse election campaigner – is that possible? According to her party, yes. Nancy Faeser has been elected SPD top candidate with a large majority. In her speech she focused on national issues.
Outside, a handful of demonstrators who slander the Federal Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, for her asylum compromise with the European states as “Nancy Seehofer” – inside, a SPD state chairwoman Faeser, in whose application speech for the top candidate in the state elections the word asylum does not appear once. She is celebrated by her party as if there had never been a fuss within the party about the asylum compromise. There was enthusiastic applause for more than four minutes, and in the discussion that followed there was nothing but support for the top candidate.
Faeser focuses on state issues
In her combative speech, Faeser focused entirely on Hessian issues: schools, more educators, care, changes in the world of work, free master craftsman certificates and the fight against right-wing extremism, which is particularly important in Hanau. Here, on the site of the party congress, a racially motivated assassin shot dead nine Hanau residents with a migration background three years ago.
The word respect ran through her speech, similar to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s election campaign. With the motto “The best forces for Hesse” the SPD is going into the election campaign. This is deliberately meant to be ambiguous: she sees her candidates as the best forces and places the fight against the shortage of skilled workers at the center of the campaign.
The opponent is not named
She has identified the CDU, which has been in power for a quarter of a century, as her main opponent. Prime Minister Boris Rhein did not call her by name, but described her as “Greeting August.”
The Greens, who for the first time declared a three-way battle for the state chancellery and put forward a candidate for prime minister in Economics Minister Tarek Al-Wazir, were not worth mentioning to her.
top candidate with great approval
On the day of the state elections on October 8, the CDU will be in office for 8,950 days or 24 years, six months and one day. “That’s enough,” she called out to her delighted audience. This Hesse-centric party conference should dispel the doubts that a top candidate is running here who actually doesn’t want to become prime minister at all, but would also be quite happy to remain in the federal cabinet.
This succeeded with her comrades: she was chosen with 94.4 percent of the delegate votes as the top candidate. The result caused a storm of applause.
Despite the EU asylum compromise, around 95% of the delegates voted for Nancy Faeser.
EU asylum compromise creates resistance
In the run-up to this, there had been fears that shadows could fall on the coronation party conference. The asylum compromise that Nancy Faeser negotiated as Federal Minister of the Interior also met with criticism in the Hessian SPD. Former SPD leader Andrea Ypsilanti took it as an opportunity to return her party membership. Three former members of parliament vented their anger at the establishment of camps on Europe’s external borders with an open letter to “dear Nancy” and described the agreement as “deeply inhumane”.
Therefore, in the week before the party congress, there were several switching conferences with the Jusos and SPD members to explain the agreements and to calm the angry minds. The Jusos made an application to reject the controversial border procedure in the EU, but at the same time vowed loyalty. You still have questions about the asylum procedure, but: “You can hear how loud your heart beats for Hessen. That’s why we support you in the election campaign.”
Marius Weiß penalized
And another problem topic was also contained by discussions in the run-up to the party congress. The deputy leader of the SPD parliamentary group in the state parliament, Marius Weiß, had copied his entry permit to the state parliament building in order to get his wife a parking space. That’s why he’s being investigated for forgery. In the meantime he has admitted a mistake – too late, many thought.
That he should be placed even higher on the party’s state election list was seen as an unjustified reward. Last night he was relegated to a worse place on the list, probably also at the instigation of the top candidate.
Klingbeil is optimistic
Nothing should cast a shadow over Faeser’s start in the state election campaign. “It’s not easy for me to give up Nancy,” SPD federal chairman Lars Klingbeil said at the beginning of the party conference. But he’s looking forward to stepping in front of the cameras on October 8th and being able to say: “We won Hesse.”
In view of the current surveys, this is the ambitious but common goal. That welded the Hessian comrades together in Hanau today – at least for the moment.