2024-09-02 09:16:29
“I am very well known in Thuringia. And I am far more popular here than the FDP itself,” he says of himself. “14 percent of Thuringians want me to be represented in the next state parliament.” If only half of these people vote for the Liberals, the plan will work out: “Then we will break the 6 to 8 percent mark. Then we will be in.”
He and his colleagues in the state are also encouraged by the enormous amount of donations. In September 2023, the party had a budget of around 100,000 euros, and since then an additional 500,000 euros in donations have been acquired. For a very small state association with around 1,300 members, this is an enormous sum – which can also be seen as a signal to the federal party: Look, we can do it this way too. The Kemmerich brand is attracting attention.
Thuringia’s top liberal is wearing the symbol of this brand on his feet again today. It is now afternoon and we are visiting the Erfurt Malt Works, a traditional company with 45 employees close to the city center. Kemmerich climbs the steps to a high tower in cowboy boots.
He says he’s been walking around like that since he was 16. At first, to provoke his parents, but even when the fashion craze died down, he kept the boots on and kept getting new ones. From the USA, from Spain, and now from Holland. Kemmerich has three pairs that he “uses all the time”. “They’re just incredibly comfortable,” he says. “And yes, people associate the boots with me. That’s why we had them printed on the large posters.”
There, clearly visible on the Erfurt main roads, the boots are displayed as a black and white photo next to the bouquet of flowers that the Left Party politician Susanne Henning-Wellsow threw at his feet after being elected as short-term Prime Minister. Again the reference to February 5, 2020, Kemmerich flirts with it when he says: That was a “key scene for many people in Thuringia”. He continues to receive a lot of support for his decisions at the time. The slogan on the poster: “Step back to get a run-up.”
And what if, despite his run-up, he doesn’t jump far enough? What if his calculations don’t work out and he’s eliminated from the state parliament?
“I don’t think that far ahead,” says Kemmerich. “Thuringia needs someone like me. An entrepreneur who understands the concerns of the economy well and who wants to tackle its problems.” His dream would be a minority coalition of the CDU, SPD and FDP, which organizes its majorities for individual projects with votes from the Left and the BSW, not with the AfD. If the CDU forges an alliance with the BSW instead of with him, the role of “only bourgeois opposition” would also be fine with him.