2024-09-20 14:20:18
K-Question
CDU social wing: “Merz does not have to become a workers’ leader”
Updated on 18.09.2024Reading time: 3 min.
The CDU and CSU agree on a candidate for chancellor before the state elections in Brandenburg. The CDU is satisfied, but Merz still has to fight for the people’s favor.
The employee wing of the CDU also expects the Union’s candidate for chancellor to stand up for the interests of employees. “Friedrich Merz does not have to become a labor leader, but he must fight with us for the votes of employees,” said the new chairman of the Christian Democratic Employees’ Association (CDA), Dennis Radtke, to the German Press Agency. The CDU and CSU agreed on Merz as the Union’s candidate for chancellor on Tuesday. CSU leader Markus Söder expressly promised him his support.
Radtke welcomed the fact that the question of the candidate for chancellor had now been resolved amicably between Merz and Söder. “It is good that the candidates have resolved the question with maximum unity. Now we can concentrate on fine-tuning the content,” he said.
However, CDU leader Merz still has to work hard to win the voters’ favor. Only just under a fifth of citizens (19 percent) consider him a suitable candidate for chancellor, according to a survey conducted by the Forsa opinion research institute for the RTL/ntv trend barometer published on Tuesday.
When asked about a suitable candidate, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) received the highest approval rating with 30 percent. This was followed by Söder (22 percent), Merz, Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck of the Greens (18 percent) and Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) (9 percent). Those surveyed could also choose more than one candidate.
Pistorius himself says he has no ambitions, but incumbent Scholz wants to run again and says he has nothing against Merz as a challenger. “The most dangerous would have been Hendrik Wüst,” said SPD party leader Lars Klingbeil on the ZDF program “Markus Lanz.” The North Rhine-Westphalian prime minister would have taken a “place in the middle,” which the SPD is also fighting for. “Merz has moved the party to the right,” said Klingbeil.
CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann was satisfied with the agreement on Merz as candidate. “We simply wanted to have a surprise effect,” he said on the ARD talk show “Maischberger.” “If we had done that after the Brandenburg election, it would have been expected.” A new state parliament will be elected in Brandenburg on Sunday.
Merz and Söder, who pledged his support to him in a surprise joint appearance on Tuesday, had asserted that the procedure had been agreed upon for weeks. North Rhine-Westphalia’s Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU), who had also surprisingly announced the evening before that he would not be running as a candidate, also believes that the election process is logical: “It is simply the right order,” he said on ARD’s “Tagesthemen.”
But will the promised unity between Merz, Söder and Wüst remain? The former candidate for chancellor of the Union, Armin Laschet (CDU), would consider renewed interference from his own camp in the upcoming federal election campaign to be inappropriate. “Things like 2021 – small skirmishes, small taunts – do not fit into such a serious situation. That is why I am confident that things will improve in this new election campaign,” said Laschet, whose qualifications had been repeatedly questioned by Söder before the last federal election, in the ZDF “heute journal”. He believes that the Union has learned from its election defeat against Olaf Scholz (SPD): “Parties that are divided do not get elected.”
Söder had also promised Laschet his full support in 2021. During the election campaign, however, his taunts contributed to the fact that the Union was seen as divided in the eyes of many people.
“I am now quite sure, also from our collaboration over the last two and a half years, that I can really rely on Markus Söder, and also on the entire CSU,” said Merz in a ZDF special. He “doesn’t need to offer Söder anything in return,” Merz stressed on ARD. It’s about mutual success.