DThe Greens had imagined the outcome of the Heidelberg mayoral election differently. After the defeats in Freiburg in 2018 and in Konstanz in 2012 as well as the turbulence surrounding Boris Palmer in Tübingen, you actually wanted to once again fly the political flag in a university town. Most recently, the Greens only managed to win mayor elections in medium-sized cities such as Göppingen or Böblingen. Theresia Bauer took risks, resigned from her position as Minister of Science and had to learn on Sunday evening that willingness to take risks and her reputation were not enough: Bauer only got 28.6 percent of the votes, the non-party incumbent Eckart Würzner, supported by the CDU and FDP, received 45 .9 percent. Sören Michelsburg (SPD) came to 13.5 percent.
Because Würzner, who has been in power for 16 years, just missed the absolute majority, another election has to be held on November 27th. In Baden-Württemberg there is currently no run-off election in mayor elections, so there can be other and new candidates alongside Würzner and Bauer. Bauer’s chances of winning the election in two weeks’ time are manageable: on Sunday, she was only able to win out of the 15 Heidelberg districts in Weststadt. In other parts of the city with a stable green voting milieu, such as Bergheim or Bahnstadt, Würzner won. The support from the university, which had always treated Bauer particularly well as a minister, was also mixed: Rector Bernhard Eitel had publicly settled accounts with Bauer’s science policy before the election.
After Theresia Bauer informed Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) and her parliamentary group about the intended candidacy, this was publicly praised as courageous. Internally, some were irritated: Is it worthwhile to send a prominent Green party into a rather hopeless election campaign against a successful black-green mayor who is internationally committed to climate protection? “When Kretschmann, Würzner and the former Environment Minister Svenja Schulze spoke at a conference on climate protection in Heidelberg, Würzner gave the greenest speech,” recalls a local politician from Heidelberg.
From the Realo camp it is now said that Bauer’s defeat shows how outstanding Boris Palmer’s victory in Tübingen at the end of October was. After a decade in the state government, the Greens had not succeeded in increasing their influence in the political front organizations and in finding the right people for personality elections. “Everyone who won their state constituency directly tends to forget that they owe it to Kretschmann’s popularity,” says a Green.
