Election campaign after riots: Giffey's second attempt

The violence on New Year's Eve has thrown the election campaign in the capital upside down.

For Franziska Giffey, the Governing Mayor, the beginning of the year was a political nightmare.

The riots, a mixture of vandalism and perfidious attacks on the police, fire brigade and rescue workers, also destroyed their plans.

With a feel-good election campaign that focuses on the SPD classic social policy, the boss in the Red City Hall wanted to make people forget something: that a senate not led by her but by the SPD had messed up the last election so badly that the state constitutional court ordered to repeat the whole vote.

Now comes the burden of the orgy of violence, the police didn't look good.

This time, Giffey cannot claim that she is not responsible for this at all.

This time with a traffic light coalition?

However, the SPD politician has repeatedly shown that she can turn things in her favor in an awkward situation.

That's how it was after the bickering about her doctoral thesis, which led to the loss of the title due to lack of quality, which many Berliners didn't care about.

Even now it could be that Giffey understands how to use the topic of security in Berlin more than its competitors.

The activism that she shows with a summit on youth violence shows her nervousness.

But Giffey is trying to get on the offensive.

She is doing this together with her party friend and Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, who will probably also be campaigning in Hesse soon.

Years ago, as district mayor of Neukölln, Giffey had taken a firm stance against clan crime and youth violence, making security in the city a major issue in the election campaign a year and a half ago.

That has contributed to their success.

At the same time, demands for a tough domestic policy have always met with resistance from the Greens, the Left Party and parts of the SPD.

Giffey had therefore not wanted a red-green-red Senate.

But the far-left SPD in Berlin stumbled on her when trying to form a traffic light coalition.

With the continuation of the left-wing alliance, Giffey has annoyed many voters to whom she had promised an end to the red-red-green era in Berlin.

Will they punish Giffey for it this time?

The Governing Mayor has - breach of word or not - a few advantages on her side.

She is more popular than her party, which means that the election campaign is tailored entirely to her.

And it has weak competitors.

It is true that the last election evening electrified the Berlin Greens when they looked like the winners for a short time.

Your top candidate, Environment and Transport Senator Bettina Jarasch, claims to be the head of the Red City Hall.

But most Berliners find it difficult to imagine the Greens as a representative of the capital, let alone as the mother of their country.

Unlike Giffey's case, Jarasch is less popular than her party.

And Giffey never misses an opportunity to portray the Greens as a messianic group who want to ban driving in Berlin tomorrow.

Should Giffey be in front again in the end, she would again be the savior of the Berlin SPD.

If she can keep the Greens at bay, she would have strengthened her position in her own party.

It is unclear whether Giffey can then take revenge for her defeat within the party and enter into a different coalition than the previous one.

Unlike the Greens and the Left, who want to continue the left-wing coalition, it has not yet committed itself;

she publicly wishes that the FDP would move back into the House of Representatives.

The Left Party would like to get rid of Giffey as a coalition partner.

Especially when it comes to domestic political issues, the Senator for Justice, Lena Kreck, is a total failure and rejects the term clan crime as stigmatizing and racist.

Should there be a new edition of Red-Green-Red after the election, the breaking point for the coalition will come in the summer.

Then the expert commission for the expropriation of real estate companies will give their verdict.

The majority of the experts named by the Left and Greens will consider the expropriation to be feasible and right, those from the SPD will see it differently.

Giffey must then get her party behind her or the coalition will be ruined.

A German capital that takes the path of expropriation should also be anathema to SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

In a month, Berliners can vote again.

How many will actually do this will help decide whether the balance of power in the capital will be rearranged again.