German CDU Leader Kramp-Karrenbauer Steps Down After Thuringia Scandal

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chosen successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, resigned as CDU leader following a scandal in Thuringia. (Wikipedia Commons)

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer stepped down as leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) on February 10. Her resignation follows a scandal involving the CDU voting with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to elect the governor of the German state of Thuringia. 

In 2017, the AfD was the first far-right party in modern German history to gain seats in the country’s parliament, and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right CDU party, along with all other parties, has maintained a policy of never cooperating with the AfD. This may change with the vote for governor of Thuringia on February 5. The AfD has been gaining support since it first won seats in the German national parliament in 2017, and in the October 2019 elections in Thuringia, it doubled its share of the vote and even outperformed the CDU.

While incumbent Governor of Thuringia Bodo Ramelow was expected to win with a minority coalition of left and center-left parties, the AfD unexpectedly supported the CDU-backed center-right candidate, Thomas Kemmerich. This is the first time that a governor of any state has been elected with support from the AfD. Kemmerich has denied any cooperation or planning with the AfD and resigned from the governorship on February 6. 

“It was a bad day for democracy,” Merkel said, in reference to the AfD voting with the CDU in Thuringia.

After her inability to prevent the Thuringian CDU from voting with the AfD, Kramp-Karrenbauer, Merkel’s planned successor, stepped down from her leadership of the CDU. The AfD has taken Kramp-Karrenbauer’s resignation as a victory, and Alexander Gauland, a senior leader of the AfD, has said that her resignation marks an end to the consensus in the CDU of isolating the AfD. 

“The AfD stands against everything that we in the CDU stand for,” Kramp-Karrenbauer said in her announcement that she would step down from CDU leadership.

Kramp-Karrenbauer’s departure throws the state of the CDU into uncertainty. Preferred by Merkel as her successor for chancellor, Kramp-Karrenbauer has now announced that she will not seek the job. She narrowly won her leadership race in 2018, and Friedrich Marz, one of her opponents in 2018 and a vocal critic of Merkel, is a strong contender for the leadership. Marz is popular with the conservative side of the party, and his election would mean a shift to the right for the CDU. Another possible leader is Armin Laschet, the current governor of North-Rhine Westphalia. Laschet is known as a green Christian Democrat and has a strong history of working with both the Free Democratic Party and the Greens. 

Kramp-Karrenbauer will remain the party leader until her replacement can be chosen at a CDU party conference in December, but it is clear that the next leader of the CDU will have to choose who their allies are. They may continue Merkel’s isolation of the AfD in favor of the Social Democrats, FDP, or Greens, or they may accept the far-right AfD as a part of a governing coalition for the first time in German history.