SPD chancellor candidate Scholz opens the election campaign for a direct mandate for the Bundestag on new territory: The Hamburg constituency is Potsdam, the format is a digital citizens' group. It's not that easy, but Scholz is undeterred.
Olaf Scholz has two different work outfits: if he wears a tie, he is Vice Chancellor and Federal Minister of Finance. If the jacket is sporty and an open shirt button instead of the tie, Scholz, on the other hand, is mostly on the road as a comrade and candidate for chancellor of his SPD. So there is no need for an elaborate makeover when the 62-year-old appears again in the evening after a long ministerial day including a cabinet meeting at an important date in normal times: the first election campaign event in the constituency of the candidate for chancellor, in Potsdam-Mittelmark. But there can be no talk of a pompous election campaign start. The SPD calls the format "future talks", a kind of digital town hall in which all citizens can ask the candidate questions. It should be the prelude to a nationwide online tour through as many constituencies as possible.
You have to have seen Olaf Scholz yourself to believe that the politician, who usually comes across as a bit stiff on television, is good with people. Scholz has a temperament only by North German standards, but at least – you can see that in comparison to Angela Merkel – he tries to keep sentences straight and to use vocabulary in everyday life. It should hurt Scholz to be able to make a few personal appearances on site due to the pandemic.
But the pandemic also leaves a top politician time for sport. The visibly fit because jogging Scholz smiles relaxed when he steps in front of the camera in the early evening and meets the moderating Potsdam city councilor Sarah Zalfen on a screen opposite him. The co-chair of the Potsdam SPD reads questions sent in by email or asked in the chat for 90 minutes. Interested parties who have registered in advance can also present their concerns personally in the video conference, while most of the up to 240 participants according to the SPD count follow the events in the live stream on Facebook or YouTube. The questioners all seem to be sympathetic to Scholz: Those involved greet the chancellor candidate from their apartments with "Hello Olaf!". It doesn't get any more personal in this digital format.
He's still new to town
However, this evening offers a stumbling block: Questions about constituency issues. After all, the native of Lower Saxony and former First Mayor of Hamburg has only lived in the Brandenburg state capital for two and a half years. Scholz has no particular attachment to East Germany, unlike Annalena Baerbock, for example. The possible Chancellor candidate of the Greens is also from Lower Saxony, but has lived in Frankfurt an der Oder in Brandenburg since her student days – and is running in the same constituency. It is somewhat unlikely that it will only get around ten percent of the votes in the coming autumn as it did in 2017. The CDU is also strong in the residential city with its villa districts. So Scholz is applying for a highly competitive direct mandate.
That evening, Scholz had to answer three questions about his new constituency. What does he say about the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation complaining about damage caused by sledging children after the winter weekend? "I like to admit that I found the reporting a bit strange, that children sledding now are a problem." In any case, the laughing children would have pleased him.
For which monuments he wants to stand up, asks a woman who recalls related projects by Maja Schüle. Today's Brandenburg Minister of Science won the only SPD direct mandate in an eastern German state in the 2017 federal election in Scholz's constituency. Scholz's answer: He thinks monuments and their co-financing by the federal government are important. Regarding a question about a controversial service station construction in the region, Scholz says: "I already know the topic and I have firmly resolved to go deeper into it."
An answer to everything
Otherwise, the digital format has the same problems as town hall meetings in the real world: A disordered wealth of topics is broached. The candidate is prepared for every question and if not, he uses it as a keyword for other great ideas or personal contributions. Scholz is good at it, speaks fluently and almost never stumbles. Because the SPD has resolved to be as specific as possible in its projects with its four future missions and an election program for the next ten years, Scholz hardly has to limit himself to empty phrases on any topic.
Apartments? "I want 400,000 apartments to be built in Germany a year and I want 100,000 of them to be subsidized apartments." The Berlin referendum "Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen"? "I am in favor of focusing on developing municipal housing associations." No material time limit? "This grievance must end." Broadband expansion: The Union has "repeatedly given in to pressure from lobbyists". He'll do it differently. Climate policy? Longer remarks on the SPD projects and a broad side against the Greens, whose renewable energy balance in the federal states is weak: "Politics is not just talking. Nothing comes by itself, you have to do it."
Scholz is "enthusiastic"
It was already evident in the TV appearances of the past weeks that Scholz wanted to focus on his experience and detailed knowledge on a variety of topics; always with a firm, calm voice and always aggressive towards the Union and the Greens. Scholz can list his own successes from both his time as Hamburg's mayor and as Federal Minister of Finance, which he confidently sheds light on.
It is the SPD's strategy to lure previous Merkel voters, for whom seriousness, experience and a policy aimed at balancing out are important electoral criteria. But the more the long-serving Scholz emphasizes his own role in the past 20 years, the more he reminds voters that Scholz and the SPD have always been responsible – also for the grievances that they really want to overcome.
This supposed contradiction is not always easy to convey. But the "future talks" will give Scholz plenty of space to fine-tune content and self-portrayal. Not only because of the pandemic, but also because of the tight election campaign budget – ten million euros less than in 2017 and, at 14 million euros, hardly more than the Greens – the SPD is primarily relying on online campaigns.
But if you extrapolate the time and audience of the Potsdam "Future Talks" to all constituencies, Scholz has to talk in front of the camera for 18 days to speak to 75,000 people, many of whom are inclined to the SPD anyway. The Chancellor candidate emphasizes that the advantage of digital in town hall is more in listening than in speaking: "That is why I am so enthusiastic about the format: If I appear here 200, 300 times, I will be asked all the questions." Then he knows what really moves people. Unbutton your shirt, perk up your ears: this is how it works, the election campaign in times of the pandemic.
.