It’s always nice when cliché and reality collide: Ludwig Hartmann, the Green Party’s direct candidate for the state elections on October 8th, stands at Gärtnerplatz and distributes green paper pinwheels. A couple with two children thanked them politely, but no: “We already have one, it’s on the cargo bike.” Hartman laughs.
He also has a good laugh: In the last election in 2018, he clearly won the constituency, with 44 percent of the initial votes. Hans Theiss from the CSU got just 16.3 percent. And with 42.5 percent of the total votes, the Greens were more successful in no Bavarian constituency than in the center of Munich.
Middle is a relatively broad term: the constituency includes the districts of Ludwigsvorstadt-Isarvorstadt and Schwanthalerhöhe as well as parts of Au-Haidhausen and Untergiesing-Harlaching. It has only existed since 2018 – for that election, the voting districts in Munich were redesigned in a way that evil tongues refer to as “gerrymandering”. The majority tactically redistributes voting districts in such a way that their own candidates benefit as much as possible from this in the next election. Strongholds of the Greens and the SPD from the Free State were united in the new Mitte constituency. In doing so, critics speculated, the CSU state government wanted to ensure that its candidates had better chances in neighboring districts.
The plan didn’t work, the Greens not only won the direct mandate in the central constituency in Munich, but also four others. The result of the new division is that the CSU candidates – see Hans Theiss 2018 – have poor chances in the Munich Central constituency. And because the CSU wins direct mandates throughout Bavaria, no matter how good a ranking on the list, there is little chance of success.
Ludwig Hartmann does not dispute the fact that the CSU graciously leaves Munich city center to the Greens, albeit not without ulterior motives. The trained communications designer, 45 years old, has been in the state parliament since 2008, stands at his information stand at Gärtnerplatz with his pinwheels and appears in the habitus of a sure winner. He leaves no doubt that this is a home game: “It’s more about mobilizing people,” he says, so that they actually vote. You hardly have to convince anyone here.”
Seen this way, Susanne Seehofer ventures into the lion’s den: She drives to Gärtnerplatz in her Mini, which has been pimped out into a “Susanne-Mobil”: Susanne portrait left and right, election campaign slogans, homepage address, QR code. Seehofer has a famous name in Bavaria, she is the daughter of Horst Seehofer, the former Bavarian Prime Minister and Federal Minister, of course CSU. The surprise and headlines were all the greater when she announced three years ago that she was going into politics – but not in her father’s party, but in the FDP.
Direct candidate Susanne Seehofer is campaigning for voters for the FDP – not just in her constituency.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
She said at the time that her father didn’t try to talk her out of it – he just said: “Do you really want to do this to yourself?” She did it, and three years later she is in eighth place on the FDP list for Upper Bavaria and is running as a direct candidate in Munich-Mitte. The 32-year-old business economist is currently taking a break from her job at BMW – because she is on the campaign trail “from morning to night.” She is not only met with cheers and approval, to say the least, which she summarizes in the cautious sentence: “The traffic lights in Berlin are not giving the FDP any tailwind.”
For her, the CSU, she says, is an ideological party. But for her, it’s about creating a country in which “no one way of life is preferred over another.” She also has problems with her own party; she thinks that the issue of climate should be tackled differently, that it shouldn’t just be about housing construction in Munich, and that the FDP is not associated with social warmth. And women, of course there are too few women in the party.
Susanne Seehofer probably won’t win the direct mandate, but her place on the list is not that hopeless – if, yes, if the FDP even manages to get into the state parliament. That’s why she’s not limiting her election campaign to the city of Munich, but is traveling throughout Upper Bavaria: every vote she gets for the FDP is also a vote for her. And what happens if Markus Söder no longer wants to form a coalition with Hubert Aiwanger and his Free Voters – Susanne Seehofer has a clear plan for herself: “I want to learn a lot first.” But she does have an idea for her top candidate: “Martin Hagen would certainly be a better economics minister than Aiwanger.”
Susanne Hornberger not only meets Prime Minister Söder in the beer tent, this Tuesday she discusses with him in the Hotel Deutsche Eiche.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
Susanne Hornberger doesn’t have to worry about such career decisions, but she probably does anyway: She has been a member of the CSU since 1994, so she is more than used to political thinking. She has only run for office once, in 1996, when she was still a student, for the Munich city council, 67th place on the list, filler candidate. And now: direct candidate for the state parliament in a constituency that she describes as the “most difficult in all of Bavaria” for the CSU. But the party leaders also know that, which is why “no one will tear her head off” if she isn’t elected. Since she doesn’t have to worry about her head, she’s going into the election campaign in a “calmly positive” way.
Tenth place on the Upper Bavaria list is actually not bad, but it probably won’t do them any good. Nevertheless, she is committed to the election campaign, has taken a leave of absence as head of communications for the Hanns Seidel Foundation and is on the road full-time for state elections, including two hours of door cleaning six times a week – doorstep election campaigning.
Hornberger says she is not a classic CSU woman and single, which is a minority among the Christian Socialists. This, she says, also gives her the advantage of being able to bring issues into the party that married fathers might not see that way – the problems of single people, for example when it comes to the issue of care.
This Tuesday she is discussing with Markus Söder in the “Deutsche Eiche” hotel, and anyone who knows that this is the living room of the Munich gay scene, so to speak, can already see that the CSU, at least the one in Munich-Mitte, is also interested in this want to get closer to the group of voters. Oh yes, that’s also important to her to emphasize: she has lived in Haidhausen for many years, Susanne Seehofer in Schwabing, Ludwig Hartmann even in Landsberg am Lech. Incidentally, Daniela di Benedetto is running for the SPD, with similar prospects of a direct mandate as Susanne Hornberger.
Ludwig Hartmann is still standing at Gärtnerplatz with his green wind turbine. His comrades-in-arms brought food, two pints of beer, two cyclists. Hartmann now also talks about Hubert Aiwanger and the leaflet affair: It could be that Markus Söder only shied away from expelling Aiwanger and a cabinet reshuffle now, shortly before the election. But perhaps after the election he will no longer be interested in the unpredictability of his current economics minister. Ludwig Hartmann leaves no doubt about what the alternative would be for him: “The black-green issue is far from over!”