After the first district administrator and the first mayor, the AfD now also wanted to appoint the first mayor in Germany. But that didn’t work in Saxony-Anhalt.
Despite a lead in the first round of voting, the AfD in Bitterfeld-Wolfen (Saxony-Anhalt) did not manage to win the mayoral election. Your candidate Henning Dornack won 46.18 percent of the votes in the runoff.
The incumbent mayor Armin Schenk (CDU) got 53.82 percent and remains city boss. This emerged from a presentation of the election results in the town hall in Bitterfeld-Wolfen.
In the first round of voting, Dornack was still ahead, with a lead of more than four percentage points. The former police officer is deputy chairman of the Bitterfeld-Wolfen city council. The city in southeast Saxony-Anhalt has 37,000 inhabitants and is known as a location for the chemical industry.
Not the first time
A similar situation had already taken place a few weeks ago in Nordhausen, Thuringia, where the AfD candidate Jörg Prophet was defeated after having a lead in the first round of voting.
In order to prevent Dornack from being elected, a non-partisan alliance for democracy and tolerance initiated an online petition. Among others, Prinzen singer Sebastian Krumbiegel and Saxony-Anhalt’s Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff campaigned for Schenk. It’s about a clear demarcation from the AfD and the reputation of Saxony-Anhalt, said Haseloff in advance.
The AfD was last successful in the south of Saxony-Anhalt in July: Hannes Loth prevailed in the mayoral election in the town of Raguhn-Jeßnitz (Anhalt-Bitterfeld district). Previously, Robert Sesselmann was elected as the country’s first AfD district administrator in Sonneberg, southern Thuringia. This further fueled the debate about the current rise of the AfD, which the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies as a suspected case of right-wing extremism nationwide.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
