Berlin Andreas Bovenschulte likes to let it rip. The mayor of Bremen belts out Queen songs with his guitar in front of his fellow Prime Ministers. A little love of punk from my youth is still there, he says.
Meanwhile, Bovenschulte’s job is the objectivity of politics, but he still rocked on Sunday – at least from the perspective of the SPD the election in Bremen. According to projections from 6 p.m. on Sunday, Bovenschulte and his SPD won 29.5 percent in the election in the smallest federal state, 4.6 percent more than in 2019.
The 57-year-old remains mayor and Bremen is likely to remain the last left bastion in Germany, since Bovenschulte can mathematically continue his previous coalition with the Greens and the Left – the first in a western German state.
Strengthened by the election victory, he could also play a stronger role in federal politics in the future. Bovenschulte gave the SPD what the party so desperately needed after the recent defeat in the elections in Berlin: an election victory.
Bovenschulte managed the feat of bucking the negative trend of the SPD in the federal government. Bremen has always been a red stronghold. The SPD has governed uninterruptedly since 1945, and the weak result of just under 25 percent four years ago was considered a slip.
The SPD politician also played music during the election campaign.
(Photo: dpa)
But the victory is still impressive. According to a Bremen SPD rule of thumb, in the past the Social Democrats were a maximum of ten percentage points above the federal polls. In this election it was now XX percentage points. On the one hand, this is due to the weakness of the Greens, but in Bovenschulte’s opinion, of course, it is also due to his good government policy.
SPD leftists like Bovenschulte are often less successful in elections
The lawyer, who has a doctorate, has been in charge of Bremen City Hall for four years. In 2019, he left the coalition negotiations to his predecessor Carsten Sieling (SPD), who then had to withdraw in order to secure power for the SPD despite the electoral defeat.
Normally, a Bremen mayor does not appear much in federal politics, but Bovenschulte became a sought-after interview partner during the corona pandemic. For a long time, Bremen was considered the frontrunner when it came to vaccinations, and schoolchildren were equipped with tablets for distance learning faster than anywhere else.
Bovenschulte is considered one of the party leftists who often do not do well as top candidates in elections. However, the father of two daughters did not repeat the mistake made by his Berlin party friends. From Bovenschulte’s point of view, they had far too little emphasis on the capital’s economic successes.
During the election campaign, Bovenschulte constantly emphasized that no federal state has recently grown as strongly as the structurally weak Bremen with its still comparatively high unemployment rate. That hasn’t been the case for 50 years.
A few days before the election, Bovenschulte also happily passed around a survey that attributed him more economic competence than his opponent from the CDU, Frank Imhoff.
The CDU candidate could not prevail against Andreas Bovenschulte.
(Photo: dpa)
Shortly before the election, Bovenschulte set what he believes to be an important course for the future of the Hanseatic city. Bremen was the only federal state to pull the exception clause of the debt brake again this year in order to be able to incur additional debts of three billion euros.
Bovenschulte wants to use the money to contain the consequences of the Ukraine war, but above all to finance the future of the city-state in order to be able to cope with the climate crisis and transformation. The action is controversial. The opposition criticizes that Bovenschulte has “set the course for the state’s inability to act due to over-indebtedness”. Economists see it the same way.
>> Read here: How the federal states pile up ever higher mountains of debt
Despite criticism like this, the first election campaign as a top candidate for Bovenschulte could hardly have gone better. “Bovi”, as Bovenschulte has been called since childhood, was hard to miss not only because of his height of almost two meters. His likeness was primarily to be seen on the SPD election posters, and a “Bovi” magazine was also printed and sent to households.
Bovenschulte benefited from the weakness of the Greens in the Bremen election
And then Bovenschulte also got election help from the Greens. The chaos surrounding the heating revolution and the affair in the federal government surrounding Robert Habeck’s Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Patrick Graichen, turned the image of the Greens into “the good guys”. Many who had previously made their cross with the Greens defected to the SPD in Bremen.
From Bovenschulte’s student days, a first appearance in the Bremen town hall has been handed down. With others, he tried to prevent an honorary doctorate from being awarded to a Mercedes manager. The students were thrown out.
Andreas Bovenschulte was able to convince the voters.
(Photo: Reuters)
Bovenschulte now has a different relationship with the car manufacturer. Mercedes is the largest private employer in the city. And Bovenschulte himself is no longer thrown out of the town hall, but is now firmly in the saddle as Bremen’s mayor.
“We will rock you” by Queen Bovenschulte had often intoned during the election campaign. In the end, his strategy worked.
More: Greens get between the climate protection fronts