The party brings back the law professor, who has already left the national political scene. The People’s Party is finding it increasingly difficult to find staff.
Hans-Ueli Vogt does not always politicize along the lines of his party.
You have to hand it to the Zurich SVP: Nobody expected that she would conjure Hans-Ueli Vogt out of a hat and send him into the race to succeed Ueli Maurer. The party managed to come up with a surprise, because Vogt is a valid candidate and not a quick fix.
Vogt had already said goodbye to the national political scene. At the end of 2021, the city of Zurich resigned from the National Council. He felt like a tennis player on a soccer field, he told the Tamedia newspapers when announcing his departure. “I can also play a pass, but I’m much better on the tennis court.” By the tennis court he meant the law firm. Vogt is a law professor at the University of Zurich.
So Vogt prepared to become an ordinary partisan. However, even then the 52-year-old let it be known that he would feel more comfortable in the role of executive politician than in the parliamentary role. Now he has this opportunity: As an “extremely competent personality”, his party announced him at the presentation as a candidate for the Federal Council.
Nobody who rumbles
Vogt is not a typical SVP candidate. He politicizes cautiously, he is not a rumbler. As an urban intellectual, he doesn’t really fit in with the down-to-earth, rural and conservative SVP. In fact, there are differences: in style and also in questions of content. And he didn’t always politicize along party lines either. Vogt is and thinks far too independently to submit to a predetermined course.
During his time in the Bundestag, Vogt got himself into trouble within the party, especially in the debates about corporate responsibility. He absolutely didn’t want to move away from a counter-proposal, which was very accommodating to the initiators – and which he himself had helped to draft. He caused considerable trouble within the SVP.
After the cancellations of heavyweights like Ernst Stocker, Natalie Rickli, Gregor Rutz and Thomas Matter, Vogt is the last hope of the Zurich SVP. The draft horses had other priorities: Stocker and Rickli should secure the seats in the Zurich government council, Rutz put professional projects first, and Matter flirted with an opposition course. He said: “If we want to set the pace again from Zurich, we are freer without our own Federal Council.”
The party is spared an embarrassment
But even the surprising candidacy of Hans-Ueli Vogt does not change the fundamental problem that the party has had for some time. It is increasingly struggling to find personnel for executive elections. That was the case in the city of Zurich last spring when the SVP sent Roland Scheck into the running for the city council, a candidate who had already tried it once in 2014 and ended up third from last.
This was also evident in the search for candidates for next year’s government council elections. Because the party leaders could not find a successor, they begged the 67-year-old Stocker to run again. Stocker allowed himself to be persuaded. Even then, a number of prominent SVPers canceled Stocker’s successor. Among them several national councilors – and Hans-Ueli Vogt.
The personnel problem is not new, but the party is obviously struggling with the solution. This is not good evidence for the party, especially since the canton of Zurich was once the nucleus for the SVP’s success. After all, Vogt spares the cantonal party the embarrassment of not standing as a candidate.
His chances of actually being elected is another matter. In any case, the roles in the race to succeed Ueli Maurer in the state government are clearly divided. Albert Rösti is the favourite, Hans-Ueli Vogt the outsider. The law professor should provide more excitement.