The SPD parliamentary group in the Hessian state parliament has a new chairman.

In a fighting vote on Tuesday, the long-standing parliamentary managing director Günter Rudolph narrowly prevailed against the deputy chairwoman Lisa Gnadl.

The 65-year-old North Hesse received 15 votes, and 13 MPs voted for his 50-year-old opponent Lisa Gnadl from Wetterau.

There was one abstention.

Rudolph, who has been a member of Parliament since 1995, succeeds Nancy Faesers.

She is the new Federal Minister of the Interior.

Ewald Hetrodt

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung in Wiesbaden.

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In his application speech, Rudolph clearly acknowledged Faeser's leadership role in the Hessian SPD, reported participants at the parliamentary group meeting.

Faeser had to give up her parliamentary mandate, but is still party leader.

After his election, the new parliamentary group leader underscored the goal of replacing the incumbent state government.

"We will work on this in close teamwork within the parliamentary group and together with the SPD Hessen and the state chairman Nancy Faeser."

A survey of the Hessians commissioned by the Bild newspaper on October 26th showed the SPD to be 26 percent.

The CDU and the Greens each got six points less.

Stayed true to its beginnings

The Social Democrats wanted to turn the mood into a victory “by the state elections in 2023 at the latest,” said Rudolph. With his election, the parliamentary group voted in favor of continuing the critical and constructive opposition policy that he helped shape along the way. He named education, the digital and social justice as the main focus areas. The aim is to ensure "that those who hold our country together with hard work get their fair share of the prosperity in our society."

Rudolph embodies social democratic veterans.

He has been a member of his party for almost four decades.

The reason for his entry was Willy Brandt's reform policy in the 1970s.

North Hesse has completed the classic ox tour and has stayed true to its beginnings.

Since 1977 he has been a member of the Edermünde municipal council in the Schwalm-Eder district.

He won his constituency seven times.

When Rudolph entered parliament for the first time in 1995, the SPD led the government under Prime Minister Hans Eichel before a bourgeois majority was elected under Roland Koch in 2000.

Because no other Social Democrat has been a member of the parliamentary group for as long as Rudolph, he has the unique selling point of knowing what it feels like to belong to a ruling party.

"Highly committed and accomplished"

Rudolph took over the office of Parliamentary Managing Director in 2009. He was a regular member of the shadow cabinets of leading social democratic candidates.

Andrea Ypsilanti planned to make him Minister of Transport when, contrary to her announcements in the election campaign, after the state elections in 2008, she wanted to be elected not only by the Greens but also by the left as Prime Minister.

The former SPD leader Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel would have given him the same task if he had been elected.

However, the department should be expanded to include responsibility for rural areas.

The fact that Rudolph worked in the senior civil service of the city of Kassel for 14 years before he moved into the state parliament benefits him when the state parliament deals with issues such as the salaries of civil servants. Domestic politics and right-wing extremism are further focal points of his work. Interior Minister Peter Beuth (CDU) should just not believe that after Faeser's move to Berlin he will be spared the criticism of the Social Democrats in the future, Rudolph called to him last week in the general debate in the state parliament.

At the plenary session on Tuesday, congratulations were received.

He will shape the office "in his own way," said the President of the State Parliament Boris Rhein (CDU).

Prime Minister Volker Bouffier (CDU) called Rudolph a "highly committed and accomplished colleague".

While the left-wing parliamentary group contented itself with a one-line press release, the leader of the FDP parliamentary group, René Rock, praised the Social Democrats as “an experienced and reliable state politician who always finds clear and accurate words”.

Rock was convinced that the FDP and SPD “will continue their good and constructive cooperation”.