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Hamburg vote offers boost for beleaguered SPD

by editor

HAMBURG — Germany’s Social Democrats have been going through lean times but they can still count on Hamburgers for nourishment.

The center-left party, junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, has endured electoral beatings and leadership turmoil in recent years. It’s a distant third in national polls, behind Merkel’s center-right bloc and the Greens. But the SPD is on course to retain power in the city-state of Hamburg, a traditional stronghold, in an election on Sunday.

Such regional elections punctuate the German political calendar and can feed into the national picture. Hamburg is the setting for the only big ballot of 2020 following a series of status-quo smashing votes in eastern Germany through late 2019, so victory would offer a glimmer of hope to the SPD, the country’s oldest party, that all is not lost.

The race for the Hamburg mayor’s job this time is between SPD incumbent Peter Tschentscher, a former city finance minister, and Katharina Fegebank of the Greens, who has served as deputy in the outgoing coalition government between the two parties. Whatever the final result on Sunday, the two parties will almost certainly govern together at state level while competing fiercely for the position as Germany’s pre-eminent progressive political force.

Metin Hakverdi, an SPD member of the German parliament who represents a constituency in Hamburg’s south, said the local party was showing its national big brother “how to win elections.”

The SPD’s projected success in Hamburg may hold limited lessons for the national party

“We have seen other big cities go to the Greens, in Hannover and Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, and in Berlin the polling is a disaster for us,” noted Hakverdi, part of whose constituency was once held by one of the SPD’s historic figures, former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

Polls in Hamburg put the Social Democrats’ percentage support in the high 30s, about 15 points ahead of the Greens. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) languishes in third place with around 12 percent. The left-wing Die Linke, the liberal Free Democrats and far-right Alternative for Germany are all in single digits.

But the SPD’s projected success in Hamburg may hold limited lessons for the national party. Much of it is down to the state government’s reputation for competence in a port city that prides itself on being down-to-earth and unpretentious, where locals munch on fish sandwiches and swig Alsterwasser, a mix of beer and lemonade.

Olaf Scholz, now federal finance minister, is known for lacking pizzazz but is credited with reviving the SPD in Hamburg in the 2000s after the CDU knocked them out of power. Tschentscher, his successor, is no superstar either.

Marcus Weinberg, lead candidate of the German Christian Democrats (CDU) | Morris MacMatzen/Getty Images

“Someone who is boring is super popular in Hamburg,” said Hakverdi.

On paper, Hamburg — liberal, rich, traditionally left-leaning and with a big university — should be fertile territory for the Greens. But the party that has left the Social Democrats far behind in national polls has struggled to challenge them locally.

In early January, the SPD and Greens were neck-and-neck in polling. But Farid Müller, the Greens’ lead candidate in the Hamburg-Mitte district, suggested shockwaves on the national scene pushed voters back toward the SPD. In particular, he cited the furor over CDU lawmakers in Thuringia, eastern Germany, voting together with the far right to install a state premier.

“The situation in the state parliament in Thuringia was, for the whole country, a shock,” he said. “In this situation a lot of people go to the old parties, like the Social Democrats.”

He noted the country had been shocked again in recent days by a mass shooting by a far-right extremist in the town of Hanau.

Red-Green tension

Although the SPD and Greens have teamed up in governments at national and regional level around Germany, there is little love lost between the two parties in Hamburg-Mitte, home to some 300,000 people spread across both wealthy quarters and down-at-heel neighborhoods like those around the central station.

While both the SPD and Greens agree Hamburg’s biggest problem is housing, they differ on how to solve it.

The Greens won the local election in the district last May. But the SPD teamed up with the Christian Democrats and liberal Free Democrats before eventually taking on six Green lawmakers to patch together a majority.

“It is an ideological fight between the two parties, especially in the city center,” said Falko Droßmann, the Social Democrat council leader of Hamburg-Mitte.

Droßmann is the face of a pragmatic, centrist SPD, a military officer who keeps his blue U.N. peacekeeping helmet in his office. (He’s been given time off while in elected office.) The day after the Hanau attack, he talked about the need to foster a feeling of community in an international city.

Katharina Fegebank, lead candidate of the German Greens Party, with NDR Television editor-in-chief Andreas Cichowicz, middle, and Peter Tschentscher, lead candidate of the German Social Democrats (SPD) | Morris MacMatzen/Getty Images

He also made clear his disdain for the Greens. “The Green party is in my opinion the most conservative party we have … They represent people from another income group — the more educated people who don’t have to struggle for life,” he declared.

Müller’s response is that Droßmann’s team aren’t keeping up with the way communities are changing around them.

While both the SPD and Greens agree Hamburg’s biggest problem is housing, they differ on how to solve it. The Greens advocate expanding the metro system to make it easier to shuttle in from the hinterland, while building protected cycle paths and banning cars from the center. Hamburg is Germany’s congestion capital, according to a study by TomTom.

Droßmann counters that Green proposals are out of touch with the lives of working class people. “If you have to be at a factory at six in the morning in an industrial area you don’t go there by bike,” he said.

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