Berlin Sebastian Czaja will kick things off. In the repeat election on February 12, the top candidate of the Berlin FDP must ensure that the Liberals make it into the House of Representatives. It is the first of four state elections in 2023, which will point the way for the FDP and its party leader Christian Lindner.
Otherwise, there are rather adverse conditions to encourage oneself. Surveys see the FDP nationwide at six to seven percent. That’s still a little way from the frightening five percent hurdle, but still significantly less than the 11.5 percent in the federal election.
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The traffic light coalition has so far not been doing the Liberals any good. The election campaigners in the state associations also know this.
Can you get back on the road to success?
“Of course, the state elections in 2023 also have national political significance,” says Martin Hagen, head of the FDP in Bavaria, where elections will be held in autumn. “The FDP must also get back on the road to success through these elections.” Party leaders fear that if the FDP still suffers defeats in autumn 2023, it will be difficult for them to recover by the 2025 federal elections.
In view of the approaching Berlin election, top candidate Czaja will be given speaking time in Stuttgart. The pressure is great. The first election, the start of the fateful year 2023, should not go wrong under any circumstances. “They see me as optimistic,” says Czaja. The last polls saw the liberals in the capital at six percent.
“It will be a very Berlin-specific election campaign,” says Czaja. After all, the Berliners have to go to the ballot box again because the previous Senate was unable to organize a proper election. The dysfunctional administration is an obvious campaign issue for the liberals in the capital.
The Hessian FDP top candidate Stefan Naas also says: “I’m concentrating on state issues.” Hesse should actually play in the top class, but is now experiencing the descent from mediocrity to the lower ranks. Here, too, elections are held in the fall.
There are reasons for the emphasis on national issues. In Lower Saxony, the FDP had primarily focused on the nuclear dispute that was raging in the traffic light coalition. It didn’t help. Given the current situation, there is hardly any tailwind for the election campaigners to be expected from the federal government.
So far, FDP leader Lindner has managed to keep his party on course, despite all the setbacks. There are no serious discussions about leaving the traffic light coalition. The party leadership agrees that such maneuvers would only worsen the misery.
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“The citizens want a self-confident and reliable FDP,” says Hagen, who also sits on the party’s national executive committee. “We shouldn’t whine about the federal government, we have to highlight what has been achieved.”
Most recently, the liberals in the federal government had often presented themselves as preventing worse things from happening, such as blocking demands from coalition partners for tax increases or a speed limit. But apparently that’s not enough for the liberal supporters. “No one is elected to prevent something,” says Berlin’s top candidate Czaja. “In federal politics, we have to make the liberal successes, which are undisputed, more visible.”
Baden-Württemberg’s FDP chairman Theurer sees it similarly. “The federal government has a liberal handwriting,” says Theurer, who is also Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Transport. “We have to convey and highlight the successes more clearly.” According to the host, this is also what the Epiphany meeting in Stuttgart should be about.
Lindner’s message: keep calm, continue to rule
In fact, the Liberals have gotten things through in the past year. There are clear tax cuts that go beyond the coalition agreement. The easing of the corona measures was also mainly due to pressure from the FDP. Only their own supporters did not honor it as Lindner and the party leadership had hoped.
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After the defeats last year, Lindner’s message to his own people was: keep calm, continue to govern. But that alone is probably not enough.
At the end of last year, the officials in the Federal Ministry of Finance compiled measures for a growth program for Lindner, which largely reads like a declaration of war on the coalition partners. These include tax cuts or the extension of nuclear lifespans. In a position paper, the two top candidates Hagen and Naas also demand that the FDP show a clear edge on its issues.
So it could definitely get rougher again in the traffic lights. The SPD and the Greens will listen carefully on Friday to see whether Lindner’s speech in the Stuttgart Opera House sounds more like a statesmanlike minister or an aggressive party leader.
More: Wake-up call for the FDP: top candidates demand a nationwide trend reversal from Lindner