With a strong result of 62.1 percent, the CDU members vote for Friedrich Merz as their new boss. This gives the veteran a strong tailwind. He’ll still need it. The future chairman faces three challenges – but he also has two advantages on his side.
In the afternoon, three bars flash up on a canvas in the CDU party headquarters, the one on the left for Helge Braun, the one in the middle for Friedrich Merz and the one on the right for Norbert Röttgen – the three candidates for the chairmanship of the party. The approximately 400,000 members of the party should cast their votes by letter and the result will now be announced in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus with the bars rising upwards. But left and right stop somewhere below, only that of Merz continues to grow in height – at the end the number 62.1 appears at the top. 62.1 percent, that’s how many of the members voted for him. Merz is the designated party chairman. He is to be officially elected at a party congress in January.
“I silently said ‘Wow’,” said the winner of the moment when he found out about the result. It is definitely a “wow” moment, and not just for Merz. Whatever you think of the former parliamentary group leader and Merkel’s rival, on this day you can not only congratulate him, but also the party on the fact that it still has someone in its ranks on whom so many members can agree. To get almost two-thirds of the vote even though there were two competitors, that’s strong. The solid voter turnout of 66 percent underpins this – Merz is a beacon of hope. That gives tailwind and Merz will need that too. At least three challenges await him – it is about the parliamentary group chairmanship, the upcoming state elections and the relationship with the CSU.
The question of the parliamentary group chair will decide whether Merz was serious about all that he had promised in the past few weeks. There was talk of unity, but also that the CDU needed different minds. The parliamentary group chairmanship is next to the party chairmanship the most important office, also because it gives the holder the greatest visibility. The only problem is that the previous owner, Ralph Brinkhaus, would like to stay that way. After the general election, he was only elected until April – then Merz could stand for election. He claims that the question of who is the parliamentary group chair does not arise, but in fact, at least since the decision about the party chairmanship, that is the most exciting personnel issue in the Union.
Just don’t tear them apart like the SPD
A power struggle between Merz and Brinkhaus would be exactly what the party just doesn’t need at all. After the chairmen Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and Armin Laschet were worn out in a hurry and the federal election turned into a tragedy, the members long for unity. That is exactly what all three candidates, especially Merz, promised. But if he starts a dinosaur fight against Brinkhaus, the party would imitate exactly what it never wanted: the mistakes of the SPD. The Social Democrats tore themselves apart until they woke up to polls of 15 percent and less.
The fact that Merz, as the only one of the three presidency candidates, did not rule out becoming parliamentary leader suggests that he wants the post to himself. No matter how much power man of the old school he was, no matter how hard he tried to present himself as a family-friendly, modern party manager. Only if Merz and Brinkhaus keep a truce, however, would they maintain the much-vaunted unity and keep the promise to leave room for several heads. Merz has to hold back here, otherwise he’ll tear down what he has just built up with his strong result.
This is also related to the second major challenge: the state elections in the coming year. There are three elections in the first half of the year alone: in Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia – and CDU minister-presidents are up for re-election everywhere. What is going on in Berlin always plays a major role. In short: If these elections are lost, Merz will lose a lot of his momentum. It is interesting that two of the three prime ministers, Tobias Hans and Daniel Günther, belong more to the liberal wing of the party. Merz has to prove that, as a supposedly conservative bone, he can really help these party friends.
Merz has two advantages
The third construction site for Merz is the relationship with the CSU. The two sister parties have quarreled to the blood in recent years, the low point were the taunts from Munich in the direction of the Chancellor candidate Laschet. Markus Söder doesn’t come up with any more discordant notes, but the Bavarian should be ready at any time to push the volume control up again if he expects something from it. Merz has announced that there should be more joint meetings, more agreements, more contact. If that works? He can hope that Söder will also be more useful for his state election in 2023 than a constant dispute.
In any case, Merz has two advantages over its two predecessors. If he is elected at the party congress in just over four weeks, he should get a very good result, as his 62.1 percent of the membership decision already suggests. A problem for AKK and Laschet was that they had to prevail against Merz in battle votes. They won that, but only got a good 50 percent of the votes. As a result, it always seemed that they really only represented half of the CDU. In addition, they were not allowed to profile themselves at the expense of Chancellor Angela Merkel, although that is exactly what many members wanted. Merz no longer has the ballast. In this respect, it is easier for him. Nevertheless, it will be a difficult first year.