Germans elect first far-right mayor, a boost for the AfD
Voters in eastern Germany elected a far-right mayor for the first time on Sunday, reflecting the rising popularity of the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Tim Lochner, 53, an independent backed by the party, will lead Pirna, a town of 38,000 in the state of Saxony, where the party was recently labeled an extremist organization by state authorities.
“It is very important for the AfD,” said Benjamin Höhne, a political scientist who studies populism. “It allows them to show that they can take responsibility at the municipal level,” he added, noting that this was an important part of the party’s “normalization strategy.”
Mr. Lochner defeated two other candidates in a runoff on Sunday with 38.5 percent of the vote; he won the first round of voting late last month against a host of candidates, but not strongly enough to win outright.
According to recent opinion polls, almost a third of voters in the five eastern states support the AfD. In Saxony, where support is strongest, 35 percent of voters said they would choose the AfD if statewide elections were held on Sunday. Across Germany, the AfD now polls at around 22 percent support, second only to the conservative Christian Democratic Union and well ahead of the ruling Social Democrats. The AfD is poised to gain more power when three states in the east vote for their parliaments next year.
The AfD, which received just 10 percent of the vote in the most recent federal election in 2021, has benefited from a series of frustrations with Germany’s three-party government. Chief among these are fears of a shrinking economy, concerns about the war in Ukraine and, most importantly, the perception that illegal immigration has gotten out of hand. Since the AfD was founded as a small, esoteric Eurosceptic party eleven years ago, it had never achieved such a high level of support until now.
But despite its continued popularity in the east, the party was only able to win local seats this summer because of the way many municipalities and districts vote. Many of them vote on the basis of the majority principle, which means that mainstream parties can unite around the strongest, agreeable opponent to keep the far right at bay.
Such political strategies have become more important as the AfD has moved further to the right. This month, the Saxony Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a domestic state intelligence organization, labeled the Saxony state branch of the AfD extremist. Björn Höcke, party leader in neighboring Thuringia, is being tried for using a banned Nazi slogan during a campaign speech. The party broadly runs on an anti-immigrant platform that sometimes veers into anti-foreigner territory.
The rules for Saxony’s municipal elections allowed more than two candidates to advance to Sunday’s second round, and the vote against the AfD was split.
“It is a small dam break that none of the other parties has pulled back to ensure that the AfD would not win,” said Dr. Hohne.
In June, the stronghold against the AfD cracked for the first time when a member was elected district commissioner in the Sonneberg area of southern Thuringia. Then in July, the AfD won the mayoral seat of a small town, Raguhn-Jeßnitz, in Saxony-Anhalt.
But Pirna, which has a reputation for harboring citizens with far-right views, is the first city to elect a mayor backed by Alternative für Deutschland.
Pirna, a beautiful town in the region known as Saxon Switzerland, is struggling to attract industry and trade in addition to tourism. Its proximity to the capital, Dresden, has made Pirna a popular commuter town.
The mayoralty was opened after the incumbent mayor, who had turned 70 and had been in office since 2010, decided not to run for a new term.