In an interview with the Handelsblatt a few weeks before the Saarland state elections, Anke Rehlinger becomes nostalgic. The Olympic Games are in Beijing right now. Rehlinger is a sports enthusiast and has held the national shot put record since 1996.
The SPD politician recalls the 1952 games in Helsinki, in which Saarland took part with its own team of 36 athletes. Rehlinger goes through a few names from back then – and gets enthusiastic.
The anecdote is typical for the 45-year-old. Rehlinger is close to his homeland, “close to de Leut”, as they say in Saarland. And she brings expert knowledge with her. Not only when it comes to sports, but also in politics.
This Sunday Rehlinger won her political gold medal. She not only won the state elections in Saarland, she triumphed. She won the absolute majority and was crowned the new “Saar Queen”. A certain Oskar Lafontaine, who was the last SPD candidate to win in Saarland in 1994, once described himself as the “Saar King”.
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How did Rehlinger achieve this brilliant election victory?
“The Saarland voted red,” Rehlinger called into the microphone shortly after 6 p.m. on Sunday at the election party in Saarbrücken: “We fought back the trust of the citizens.” This election victory was achieved “together”.
The candidate factor was crucial
In fact, the election victory in Saarland is above all a victory for Rehlinger. 49 percent of SPD voters and 59 percent of new SPD voters only chose the party because of Rehlinger. Topics hardly played a role in the Saarland election, the decisive factor was the candidate factor.
Because even in direct comparison with Prime Minister Tobias Hans (CDU), Rehlinger was far ahead in all surveys. In the last 13 state elections, the office bonus was always a guarantee for the re-election of the incumbent.
Rehlinger undoubtedly benefited from the weakness of the others. The Greens and the Left had broken up in internal power struggles beforehand.
Things didn’t go well for Prime Minister Hans either. He was accused of a “snaking course” in the corona pandemic. Saarlanders also don’t appreciate it when someone slips into office in the middle of the election period. This was reinforced by the fact that the rather cerebral nature of the CDU Prime Minister was not particularly well received.
People-oriented and economically competent
Rehlinger, however, presented the counter-model. With success. She shakes everyone’s hand, is very close to the people. Despite this closeness to the people, Rehlinger has also managed to build up respectable competence values, which was sufficient in this election.
Rehlinger is a lawyer. She has been a member of the SPD since 1998 and has been state chairwoman since 2018. She became Minister six years earlier, at the age of only 35. Since 2014 she has been Minister for Labour, Economy, Energy and Transport and thus for precisely those issues that play a decisive role in the industrial state of Saarland. There is hardly a company or works council head who does not know Rehlinger personally.
During the election campaign, she promised to “make jobs a matter for the bosses” and to set an “employment record”. This is perhaps Rehlinger’s greatest achievement: anyone who traveled through Saarland during the election campaign quickly got the impression that even business believed the SPD candidate more than the CDU prime minister to solve Saarland’s structural problems.
Invisible in federal politics
As the new Prime Minister with an absolute majority, Rehlinger will also play a larger role in federal politics in the future. So far, however, Rehlinger has hardly been noticed outside of the Saarland, although she has been party vice of the federal SPD since 2019. Even with many a talk show appearance, she did not necessarily make a happy figure.
Now Rehlinger will also have to hold her head for the decisions of the Prime Ministers’ Conference in the corona crisis. And she will have to keep her promises to the economy from the election campaign, which will not be an easy task in view of the pandemic, the Ukraine war and the ecological restructuring of the economy.
But Rehlinger has been underestimated before. After her surprisingly clear election defeat in 2017 against Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU), many comrades had written off Rehlinger. It is said that she will probably no longer win an election after losing a lead in the polls. But as a former competitive athlete, Rehlinger knows how important endurance is to achieve great success. On Sunday, the former shot putter achieved the big win.
More: SPD wins absolute majority – Greens and FDP miss entry into the state parliament. The Saarland election