After the defeat of top candidate Sven Schulze in Saxony-Anhalt, Bundestag member Sepp Müller wants to become the new state party leader. This escalates a long-running power struggle in the CDU.
Berlin. If a Federal Chancellor publicly reprimands a deputy chairman of his own parliamentary group, then there must be great displeasure. CDU leader Friedrich Merz said on Monday that the parliamentary group vice-president had “stabbed in the back” of the CDU top candidate and Prime Minister Sven Schulze in the state election campaign.
Group leader Thorsten Frei also criticized the behavior of Sepp Müller, deputy group leader and head of the Saxony-Anhalt state group.
Will the man who was ostracized as a regicide soon become king of the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt? Müller has been fighting for this for days. Shortly before the election, the 37-year-old publicly stated that if the AfD wins the election as in the polls, then the government's mandate also lies with the AfD. He rejected the CDU's collaboration with the Left to prevent the AfD.
Quite a few saw this so shortly before the election as a gross foul, as it deprived Schulze of the already slim option of remaining prime minister - albeit in a minority government, as his CDU colleagues Michael Kretschmer and Mario Voigt are demonstrating in Saxony and Thuringia.
Müller's behavior has a longer history. Schulze has led the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt since 2021. Four years later it was clear: Schulze would be the heir to long-time Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff and would be the top candidate in the election campaign. At the beginning of the year, Haseloff also handed over the reins of government to Schulze.
Müller and Schulze had made an agreement long beforehand: one had a free field at the state level, the other at the federal level. Both would support each other in the promotion. The non-aggression pact stood. Things turned out differently.
After the federal election, Müller was suddenly no longer supposed to be parliamentary group vice-president for health, as he had been in the previous election period. Instead, the new leadership offered the employee wing member a position as nursing representative. Müller refused: He rides a bike and the S-Bahn, he doesn't need a company car. He also didn't want a seat on the powerful budget committee. The trained banker and trade unionist believed there was an intrigue - and suspected Schulze was behind it.
Müller, who came from Wittenberg, fought. He now wanted to become parliamentary group vice-president for economy and energy, medium-sized businesses, tourism - and above all for East Germany. The East German CDU MPs voted for another. But Müller, contrary to expectations, did not give up, instead campaigned with his colleagues from West Germany and the group's middle-class friends - and won the election.
This feud obviously had an impact. Schulze is now facing political end. On Monday evening he announced in Magdeburg that, as things stand, he would no longer run for state chairmanship in the fall.
Müller, however, announced his candidacy and at the same time defended himself against criticism from the Chancellor and Federal Chairman. He doesn't share the statement. Above all, she “does not share the broad majority of our state party,” said Müller.
It was rumored that Schulze would want to run for parliamentary group chairman, but then three MPs would probably leave the parliamentary group. Schulze also explained internally before the election that he wanted to know what works, not what doesn't work.
Some people understood this as a possible collaboration with the left. This is a “no-go” for a quarter of CDU supporters and only drives more people into the arms of the AfD. It is intended to justify Müller's behavior, as Schulze had always publicly stated that he did not want to forge an alliance with either the left or the right.
Schulze ran as parliamentary group leader in Magdeburg - and was narrowly elected on Tuesday with eight votes to seven, as it was said. This threatens to put the group to the test.
Müller, meanwhile, explained his plans: He wanted to defend democracy in the middle. In his opinion, the future of the CDU is at stake, both in the state and at the federal level. “There can be no cooperation with the extreme left and there can be no cooperation with the extreme right,” he stressed.
At the same time, he guaranteed that no one from the faction in the new state parliament, which only had 15 members, would defect to the AfD in order to help the party gain an absolute majority.
The CDU in Saxony-Anhalt only has around 5,000 members. Most of them are elderly. In the federal election campaign, Müller remembers, the then Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff, at the age of 72, was the most active campaigner. That is significant.
Schulze also had to live with the problem. In this area, it was not the younger members of the party base who put the posters on the lampposts. The party had to hire a company specifically for this and spend a lot of money. The party has few young members and few women. Only every tenth place on the list was filled by a woman. Whether Müller or Schulze: The CDU in Saxony-Anhalt has a structural problem.
