AfD regional win rips up German political rulebook

The children in the short video shriek with joy as a man takes baby blue balloons from his van and pops them over the fence of their kindergarten.

The balloons – some with the logo of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) – are leftovers from the far-right party’s celebration of another political milestone.

After securing seats in local councils and Germany’s 16 federal states – as well as Berlin’s federal parliament, the Bundestag – the decade-old party has now made its first leap from opposition into power.

In the eastern state of Thuringia, local AfD candidate Robert Sesselmann took 52.8 per cent in the district of Sonneberg at the weekend to become the small town’s next district administrator or county manager.

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As one of 294 such officials in Germany, Mr Sesselmann’s main tasks will be organising and overseeing the operations of local services, from schools and hospitals to public transport and waste disposal.

But the 50 year old won power by tapping frustrations with political mainstream parties in Berlin, and on issues far beyond the reach of a county manager: immigration, security and climate-protection measures.

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Last weekend’s putsch attempt means Moscow may have overlooked Mr Sesselmann’s demands for immediate peace talks with Russia. But, he says, local voters don’t care.

“The people we meet on the street are interested in where things are going with Russia sanctions and what about energy?” he said in a rare election interview. “The concrete local issues don’t interest people here.”

For jubilant AfD leaders in Berlin, Mr Sesselmann’s election opens a new era. Once he is in office, other political parties will have no option but to co-operate with the AfD – something they have sworn never to do. Now with 28 per cent support in Thuringia – and nearly 20 per cent nationally – Germany’s other parties now admit, grudgingly, that the AfD is increasingly too big to ignore. Not even an election pact in Sonneberg between all other parties was enough to head off the AfD win.

“The result is of great concern,” admitted Saskia Esken, co-leader of Germany’s ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD). “We have to align our politics – and communication – with people’s lives, listen to their needs and take their concerns seriously.”

Just as significant is how the breakthrough came in Thuringia, where the local AfD branch is considered so extreme-right that it is under observation by state intelligence officers as a potential danger to democracy.

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Political analysts have offered several theories for the recent AfD surge, from Berlin’s bickering coalition government to the low conservative profile of the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

But recent studies have torn up the idea of the typical AfD voter being an under-educated, low-earning older man. The new AfD voters are well-off, middle-aged, working and middle-class and live in more conservative areas of the country.

Previous assumptions about disgruntled jobless easterners voting for extremists doesn’t apply in Sonneberg, either, given its jobless rate – at 5.1 per cent – is among the lowest in eastern Germany.

Instead many political analysts suggest the party is growing fastest in rural areas and smaller towns with a broad narrative warning of a threat to German culture and values from an all-purpose other.

“For a long time, this came from the outside, through migrants,” said Dr Johannes Hillje, a political analyst. “Now the narrative is that this threat is also coming from within, through the transformation of society to climate neutrality – a central project of Berlin’s centre-left coalition and the Green Party.”

As for the Sonneberg kindergarten video, local police say they are having a closer look at the AfD supporter wearing a Nazi military T-shirt as he gifts the balloons from a van with a bumper sticker reading: “Volunteer Deporter.”