New election: SPD clarifies K question: Scholz instead of Pistorius

The SPD is starting the federal election campaign from an extremely difficult starting position with Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the helm. After Defense Minister Boris Pistorius resigned, the party executive committee wants to nominate the head of the failed traffic light government as candidate for chancellor next Monday. According to the election surveys, Scholz will have to make up around 15 to 20 percentage points behind the Union in the next three months in order to remain in office.

The party leadership’s decision was preceded by a tough debate about Pistorius as a possible replacement candidate, who is by far the most popular politician in Germany in all surveys. More and more SPD politicians at local, state and federal levels have openly spoken out in favor of him in the past few days.

The debate began with Mützenich’s “grumbling”.

The SPD leadership had backed Scholz early on, but initially refrained from nominating him as a candidate for chancellor after the decision to hold new elections on February 23rd. The public debate began with a statement by SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich that there was “grumbling” in the party regarding the K question.

On Thursday evening, in a three-minute video distributed by the SPD, Pistorius declared that he would not run for office, to which he had never publicly claimed. “I have just informed our party and parliamentary group leadership that I am not available to run for the office of Federal Chancellor,” he said. “This is my sovereign, my personal and very own decision.”

Pistorius: “Olaf Scholz is a strong chancellor”

Pistorius spoke out in favor of going into the election with Scholz at the helm. “Olaf Scholz is a strong chancellor and he is the right candidate for chancellor.” He led a difficult coalition of three parties through perhaps the biggest crisis in recent decades. “Olaf Scholz stands for reason and prudence.” This is particularly important in times of crisis like these.

Pistorius initially let the debate in the SPD run its course in the past few days. “In politics you should never exclude anything, no matter what it is about,” he said on Monday. “The only thing I can definitely rule out is that I will become pope.”

The path is now clear for Scholz’s nomination as candidate for chancellor. The 66-year-old from Hamburg claimed it in July. “As chancellor, I will run to become chancellor again,” he said at the time. In recent days he has not repeated this so clearly – obviously in order not to give the impression that he wants to choose himself.

The party executive nominates Scholz on Monday

The nomination is scheduled to take place at the regular meeting of the party executive committee on Monday. The board members connected digitally on Thursday evening. At the same time, the SPD prime ministers met with Scholz in the Lower Saxony state representation, then the party leadership joined them.

“We want to go into the next election battle with Olaf Scholz,” said party leader Lars Klingbeil after the digital deliberations. And he called on his party to rally behind the designated candidate for chancellor after the quarrels of the past few days. “Now it’s about unity and a common path and it’s about us fighting our way out of this situation together as the SPD.”

The designated candidate’s first acid test today

After the nomination by the party executive board with its 34 members, the party congress will vote on the candidate for chancellor on January 11th. Normally this is a formality. The candidate’s first official presentation is scheduled to take place earlier: at an “election victory conference” on November 30th in Berlin. Scholz is already completing a dress rehearsal for this today: he is appearing at an SPD congress in front of local politicians. Klingbeil is also expected there.

SPD needs extreme catching up for success

Scholz now has to switch to election campaign mode very quickly. If he wants to be re-elected, he will have to make an extreme comeback. In the surveys, the SPD is currently with values ​​between 14 and 16 percent, behind the AfD with 17 to 19 percent and far behind the Union with candidate for chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU), which has values ​​​​between 32 and 34 percent. In the current ARD Germany trend, even the Greens have now caught up with the SPD.

Scholz recently recalled the 2021 federal election in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, before which some believed the SPD was already in a hopeless situation. “The reliability of such surveys is manageable, as the last federal election showed, even if some people quickly forgot that.” Two and a half months before the election, the SPD was also far behind the CDU/CSU – up to 16 percentage points. But then Union Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet laughed in the flood area and the mood changed. In the election, the Social Democrats ultimately won 25.7 percent of the vote and Scholz became chancellor of the first traffic light coalition of the SPD, Greens and FDP at the federal level.

Four-way battle for the Chancellery

With the decision in favor of Scholz, the list of candidates for chancellor is now virtually complete. For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic there are four:

– The CDU and CSU were the first parties to surprisingly quietly name the Union faction leader in the Bundestag, Friedrich Merz (CDU), as their top man for the election campaign in September.

– The Greens nominated Robert Habeck (55) last weekend. In the ARD Germany trend, the party promptly gained two percentage points and drew level with the SPD.

– For the first time, the AfD is entering the election campaign with a candidate for chancellor. Party leader Alice Weidel is to be nominated by the party executive committee on December 8th.

Lindner: “People know what they are getting”

Former Finance Minister Christian Lindner, who was fired by Scholz, was one of the quickest to comment on the SPD’s decision on the K question in the evening. “It’s fine with me if Mr. Scholz is the SPD’s candidate for chancellor. People know what they’re getting. And what they’re not getting: #economic turnaround.”

Union parliamentary group leader Thorsten Frei (CDU) told the Berlin “Tagesspiegel” that Scholz would emerge from the power struggle as the winner, but “catastrophically damaged”. “It has become clear that large parts of the party and the parliamentary group no longer want to follow Olaf Scholz and no longer believe he will win the election.”