Mayor with Twenty-Five
Bavaria is like Texas. Agricultural in some parts, high-tech in other parts, wealthy in most parts, conservative almost everywhere. The Conservative Party, the CSU, has been running the country for than five decades.
This time however the Conservatives are in trouble. The Bavarian prime-minister, Beckstein, and the Head of the Conservatives, Huber, appear not to be such fortunate in implementing the legacy of former prime-minister Stoiber.
At the regional elections this fall, the opposition parties have a real chance to get a large pie of the Bavarian Electorate Pie. The Left-Party is most likely to enter the Parliament for the First Time and the Green Party is already hoping to be the coalition partner for a weekened Conservative Party.
The Bavarian SPD, the German Labour Party, has some problems bringing their message of change to the voters. The problem is that the campaign is not really modern, despite attempts to cultivate its Rebell-Image.
Currently the Partly of the National SPD, Kurt Beck, is in Bavaria. Despite what the media in Berlin thinks, I personally think that he is often underestimated. He is good at managing a dialogue, but his not good at backstabbing people – which is what the journalists in Berlin like so much.
In a recent Spiegel-Article about Becks Summer Tour through Bavaria, I read that he also visited Gundelsheim, a small village not far from Bamberg in the northern part of Bavaria (escuse me – correct it would be Upper Franconia).
Gundelsheim is famous now because it has a young Social Democrat as mayor, Jonas Merzbacher. I was really astonished when I read the name, but then I should not have been surprised. I met Jonas, now 25, during my Campaign for the European Parliament 4 years ago. He was quite unlike most of the other people in the SPD Youth Organisation – not so much interested in theoretical debates, but interested in pragmatic politics.
He is a “local” in the best sense of the word – member in almost all clubs in that area, knew everybody in his region, organized all kinds of activities for young and old. And as you can see in the picture below, even during his speech on the night of victory, he drinks beer, disguised as lemonade.
The Bavarian SPD needs more people like Jonas. It should present itself as the “Local Party with an international history” and help young people like Jonas to become more active in local politics.
