Sepp Müller is running for CDU state chairmanship in Saxony-Anhalt

Is he the man who will bring Saxony-Anhalt's CDU forward again? Bundestag member Sepp Müller wants to become the new state leader of his party. “I’m running for state chairman,” said the 37-year-old. He could thus succeed Sven Schulze (CDU), who is still prime minister and state leader.

Müller had already caused a stir before the state elections, in which the CDU's vote fell to 17.2 percent. “If the survey results become election results, then Ulrich Siegmund has a mandate to form a government with the AfD,” said Müller a few days before the election.

The 37-year-old said what some were thinking - but at an inopportune time. Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) publicly reprimanded Müller very clearly on Monday - without directly mentioning him by name. He pointed out to the party committees "that none of us understood that a few days before the election date, a deputy chairman of the Bundestag faction stabbed his own top candidate in the back in the way that happened three days before the election until yesterday," Merz told journalists.

Sepp Müller has been a member of the Bundestag since 2017. Four years later he also won the direct mandate in the Dessau-Wittenberg constituency. At that time, 34.3 percent of voters voted for the trained banker from Gräfenhainichen - that was the CDU's best first vote result in the East. He then rose to the position of parliamentary group vice-president of the Union.

Ahead of the 2025 federal election, Müller was named the CDU's top candidate in Saxony-Anhalt. But his result showed that he is not without controversy in the party - it was manageable with approval of around 81 percent. Müller is the father of a son and is now married to Bundestag member Wolfgang Stefinger (CSU).

Müller has one concern

Müller and Schulze are not considered particularly good party friends in the CDU. Many in the CDU were upset about Müller's move before the election. It was said that it was not possible to make such a statement shortly before the election. But Müller is worried about what will happen to the CDU if it moves further to the left.

Sepp Müller no longer consciously experienced the GDR. But he looks very critically at the SED regime and the Left. At the inaugural session of the Bundestag in 2025, which was chaired by Senior President Gregor Gysi (Left), he demonstratively held up the book “The Perpetrators Are Among Us” during his speech.

In the summer of 2025, Müller was dissatisfied with his own work in the black-red government coalition. He referred, for example, to the difficult situation in the East. "The realization that we as a bourgeois center will fall apart if we continue as before - this realization is already five years ahead in the East."