BERLIN — German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser’s decision to stay in office while also campaigning in a regional election has sparked criticism among the coalition government.
Faeser is her Social Democratic Party’s top candidate in this fall’s regional election in Hesse but is staying on in the federal Cabinet, making her the first federal minister in a decade to split time between running a ministry and hitting the regional campaign trail, raising concerns about her ability to do her job.
Asked by POLITICO on Monday if there are any rules that govern the combining of campaigning and holding office, a spokesperson for her ministry said at a press briefing, “it is a democratic matter of course that people run for democratic elections from offices, just as all prime ministers … and … incumbent chancellors [do].”
Faeser said she is “running to win” and to become the first female regional leader of Hesse, a state in the heart of Germany with 6 million inhabitants.
But if she fails to take the Hessian state chancellery in Wiesbaden, she plans to continue as Germany’s interior minister, she wrote in an internal letter to ministry staff, seen by POLITICO, and then announced it in an interview with Spiegel magazine.
Although the other contenders also have full-time jobs in high office — including Hesse’s incumbent Minister-President Boris Rhein of the Christian Democratic Union and his Green deputy Tarek Al-Wazir — the public debate has primarily centered on Faeser, who has led the SPD in Hesse since 2019, and has insisted she will continue being a federal minister “with full force.”
Not everyone buys her promise.
“In times like these, you can’t dance at two weddings politically at the same time,” said Konstantin von Notz, a senior Bundestag member for the Greens. The interior ministry is “not a suitable election campaign stage in these serious times,” said Wolfgang Kubicki, a Free Democrats lawmaker and vice president of the Bundestag.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz came to the defense of his minister and party colleague late last week, saying Faeser will fulfill her ministerial duties despite her decision to run for the top job in Hesse.
“Nancy Faeser, who I know is a very, very dutiful woman, will do everything every day for the task she has,” Scholz said.
The minister’s decision came as little surprise, as rumors that she might run for office in Hesse have been swirling for almost a year.
“I am counting on Nancy Faeser not only becoming the SPD’s top candidate in Hesse next year, but also the first female minister-president in Hesse,” ex-Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said in May 2022. “I have no plans to do that,” Faeser replied at the time about leaving Berlin.
Her change of mind comes as the German interior ministry faces a number of important issues, including right-wing extremism, Islamist terror attacks, migration policy, and tackling organized crime. Faeser has to deal with those challenges — and oversee a ministry with around 19 agencies and in total 85,000 staff — while also running an election campaign.
As a consequence, her potential move from Berlin to Wiesbaden has resulted in her track record coming under scrutiny — including the field of cyber.
“She hasn’t yet achieved many visible results,” IT security expert Manuel Atug told POLITICO in December. It seems she didn’t understand “that the coalition agreement is a work order for her,” he added.
The interior ministry is supposed to deliver key coalition policies, such as strengthening the country’s cybersecurity agency, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). However, Faeser fired its president, Arne Schönbohm, last October over later widely debunked claims that he had ties to Russia.
In the latest Infratest polling, from October, the SPD was at 22 percent — 5 percentage points behind the CDU, which is currently leading a coalition with the Greens.
