Angela Merkel successor: Markus Soeder, Armin Laschet Trade Barbs

Photographer: Michaela Handrek-Rehle / Bloomberg

Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Soeder presented himself as a force for change that could revive the fate of conservative Germans as he raised his bid to follow Chancellor Angela Merkel to the top of the bloc’s election ticket.

His candidate for the national poll in September, Armin Laschet, responded by saying that Soeder was changing his view a little too easily, accusing him of opportunism and lack of principle, according to officials on Tuesday. was a private meeting with legislators.

The battle to claim the mantle of Merkel’s successor goes down the wire with the two contenders increasingly exchanging thorny attacks that worry senior officials in their alliance. Both said the case should be settled by Friday.

Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, led by Soeder, have seen their polls tumble amid growing concerns about the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Merkel is worried that the spectacle of a public brawl between the two leading figures in the bloc will further damage its status, according to a person familiar with her thinking.

Johann Wadephul, a deputy leader of the CDU-CSU parliamentary group, said the four-hour four-hour caucus meeting went smoothly, with many lawmakers from both parties calling for support for him in their constituencies across Germany.

“There were many members of my political group who supported Markus Soeder,” Wadephul said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Wednesday. “That’s what they heard in their constituencies, and that’s what I heard in my constituency. ‘

After Laschet, the leader of the much larger CDU, was initially shocked at the prospect of a direct clash, he said Soeder had promised to make his place directly. On Wednesday night, Soeder appeared on a popular German talk show, highlighting his potential appeal to voters.

Polls have consistently shown that he would comfortably defeat his main opponents if there was a direct vote for chancellor, while Laschet would lose.

Among 2,500 people published in a Forsa poll for the broadcaster RTL on Wednesday, 39% said they would choose Soeder. That is about double the result for the leaders of Greens, Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock, and it is 14% for the Social Democratic candidate Olaf Scholz. In a similar vote, Laschet would only get 16% and take third place.

Yet the CDU chairman has a precedent on his side – the CSU in Munich has never elected a chancellor and the CDU almost always offers the candidate of the bloc – as well as the organizational muscle of its party hierarchy. But he does not succeed in agreeing to the voters.

“We need unity quickly,” Laschet said as he left Tuesday’s meeting. “It was a good discussion that we will have to make in our decision.”