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Erfurt (dpa) - Some hope to score points with the personnel, others see the next problem facing the CDU in the super election year: the former President of the Constitutional Protection, Hans-Georg Maaßen, could be elected to the Union’s Bundestag candidate in southern Thuringia.
Delegates from four South Thuringian district associations will decide on Friday.
The political commitment of the former domestic intelligence chief is also controversial in the ranks of his party.
So the joy in the CDU regional association is limited.
Maassen's chances of running for election in constituency 196 are, however, very good.
"We would have liked to have dispensed with these debates," says the Thuringian CDU.
Its chairman, Christian Hirte, recently told “Die Zeit”: “For the CDU, it does more harm than good.”
A new Bundestag will be elected in Germany on September 26th and a new Landtag is planned in Thuringia.
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Does the nationwide known measure bring the tailwind hoped for by some South Thuringian district associations in the election campaign or rather the breeze of a toxic debate about the borders of the Thuringian CDU to the right and its relationship to the AfD?
Maaßen himself recently assured in an interview with “Freie Wort”: “There must be no cooperation with the AfD.
I want to run to take votes from the AfD. "
In January 2020 Maaßen had demanded that the CDU should put up its own candidate for the prime ministerial election - and, if necessary, have him elected with votes from the AfD: «The CDU should be man or woman enough to say: No matter who chooses this candidate, The main thing is that there is a majority. " About a month later, the AfD actually helped the FDP politician Thomas Kemmerich to become Prime Minister for a short time with its votes - and Thuringia plunged into a deep government crisis. The CDU also voted for Kemmerich at the time and broke in the polls.
Since then, no other party in Thuringia has rearranged itself as fundamentally as the CDU - with new chairmen at the top of the parliamentary group and regional association.
But the old camps still exist.
After the state elections in 2019, the CDU member of the South Thuringian CDU, Michael Heym, campaigned for talks with the AfD about the possibility of forming a government.
In the south, where Maassen wants to win the Bundestag mandate, the Christian Democrats are considered particularly conservative.
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Maaßen, who is a member of the conservative values union, had already appeared in southern Thuringia in the 2019 election campaign year. It wasn't long ago that he had come under massive criticism as the President of the Protection of the Constitution in 2018 because he had doubted that foreigners would be “hunted down” after the killing of a German in Chemnitz. In November 2018, Maaßen was finally put into temporary retirement.
The fact that he is now under discussion as a federal candidate for four district associations in southern Thuringia also has to do with another problem of the CDU in the Free State: Your former member of the Bundestag Mark Hauptmann resigned as a candidate and has since left the CDU. He is accused of being involved in controversial business with corona protective masks. The Thuringian Public Prosecutor's Office is investigating suspicion of corruption. Hauptmann's place in constituency 196 became vacant.
From circles of the CDU regional association it is said that some of the Christian Democrats there probably hoped to be able to present an unencumbered candidate in the election campaign with moderation - and at the same time someone who is known nationwide.
The environment is not easy.
The SPD sends the ex-biathlon trainer and Olympic champion Frank Ulrich, who, unlike the Rhinelander Maaßen, comes from the region.
The deputy head of the DGB district of Hesse-Thuringia wants to run for the left.
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In addition to Maassen, two other applicants have signaled their readiness for a CDU candidacy in constituency 196.
One of them - Hardy Herbert - does not want to be understood as a counter-measure person.
“I am not opposed to Mr Maassen's candidacy,” he says.
Rather, he wanted to make an offer to the CDU delegates to give a regionally anchored politician the chance to move into the Bundestag.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210428-99-381508 / 2