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reThe election of the future mayor of Stuttgart remained exceptionally exciting even in the last meters. The last days were dominated by the question of whether the 30-year-old outsider and social democrat Marian Schreier, current mayor of the small town of Tengen im Hegau (Konstanz district), would have no chance against Frank Nopper (CDU), 59 . ), who remains the mayor of Backnang, to become the new mayor of the largest city in the Southwest. Schreier had even seen an advance poll.
But at 19:31 the result was clear: Nopper got 42 percent, Marian Schreier 36 percent and Hannes Rockenbauch, the chairman of the left-wing parliamentary group “Stuttgart Ökologische Sozial” (SÖS) and an eloquent former leader of the movement of protest against Stuttgart 21, received 17 percent. Just under 20 of the 545 constituencies had yet to be counted when Nopper received his first congratulations.
Four months before the state elections, the CDU managed with Nopper to recover the town hall from the Greens in an urban stronghold of the ecological party. Nopper said on election night that his election victory was “an hour of change.” In the future, the city should “shine more in the region, in Germany and in Europe”. CDU state chairman Thomas Strobl even spoke of a “sensational election night” in which Nopper would be „get more out of the state capital ”. The CDU has shown that it can certainly win elections in the big cities.
A defeat for the Greens in various ways
For the Greens, Nopper’s victory is a defeat in several respects: Stuttgart is a city, especially in the downtown district, with many green strongholds, where the Green members of the state parliament have been able to get 40 percent results. with some ease for years. And the expansion and consolidation of the communal base was part of the green growth program that the party gave itself after 2011, when it appointed Winfried Kretschmann, Germany’s green prime minister, for the first time.
The exceptionally good performance of the independent social democrat Marian Schreier also shows that there would have been a chance of victory for the SPD, the Greens and the left-wing green city council group if the contenders for the first elections on November 8 had been willing and able. able to stand up. a person and some substantive principles to agree on. And if Hannes Rockenbauch, who has little fear of contact with left-wing extremists, had not insisted on re-presenting the elections this Sunday. Schreier also achieved remarkable results in districts that are considered strongholds of the CDU, for example in Bad Cannstatt.
In Baden-Württemberg there are no second-round elections for the mayor, who is elected for eight years, and if no candidate gets an absolute majority on the first ballot, he must be elected a second time and therefore completely new. The applicants field is fully open again and they can compete more than the two relative winners of the first ballot. The applicant who receives a simple majority is then chosen.
In the first election on November 8, Nopper won 31 percent, Green Veronika Kienzle 17 percent, Social Democrat Marian Schreier 15 percent, the official SPD candidate Martin Körner – as a representative of a former people’s party – only 9.8 percent; Hannes Rockenbauch received 14 percent of the votes cast. What was remarkable about the first outcome of the OB election was the dramatic collapse of the green candidate, especially in districts like Mitte or West, where the green party has been the main force for many years.
Even in these strongholds, the CDU candidate, Nopper, was ahead. The poor performance of the SPD mayoral candidate and longtime parliamentary group leader Martin Körner was also surprising. It only managed to achieve a double digit result in districts with a large proportion of workers. After the defeat of the Greens, it was amazing that Veronika Kienzle no longer wanted to compete.
At the start of the election campaign, Marian Schreier was predicted to have respectable success because she comes from a respected family in Stuttgart, her father was a singer and her mother is an opera singer. Schreier is also considered an exceptional communication talent. Earlier in the year, the state SPD had even considered expelling him from the party because he had not resigned his candidacy. After his victory in the first ballot, the SPD did not call his election.
Schreier’s remarkable success shows that initially unknown candidates can achieve remarkable results with a social media-based campaign of rejuvenation and change. In 2018, Martin Horn, affiliated with the SPD in Freiburg, managed to oust the green mayor Dieter Salomon with a similar campaign. During the election campaign, Schreier spoke a lot about “confidence in change” and that local politics today is primarily about “legitimation through communication.” Schreier was an employee of former SPD chancellor Peer Steinbrück. Two days before the decisive election, Steinbrück recommended candidate Schreier in an interview; Frank Nopper had the support of the former prime minister and EU commissioner. In an interview with the “Stuttgarter Zeitung”, Oettinger said that Nopper must now gather the “smartest people” and develop some “Nopper projects” for Stuttgart. TEXTING
