DThe ulterior motive in making the Hessian SPD chairwoman Federal Minister of the Interior was probably to “establish” her as a top candidate for the state elections in October. Nancy Faeser took the opportunity in her own way. With an armband and pithy words, for example on New Year’s Eve, she has achieved a certain degree of notoriety.
However, she needs the office until election day in order to hold her own against her ruling competition in Hesse, Prime Minister Rhein from the CDU and his deputy Al-Wazir from the Greens. Moreover, after the cabinet reshuffle that followed the departure of Christine Lambrecht as Secretary of Defense, there was no good reason for the chancellor to also take leave of Faeser.
Faeser has support – Röttgen does not
The Federal Minister of the Interior will therefore go into the election campaign with an office bonus in an ambiguous sense. She stays in Berlin if the SPD loses. This is often criticized as cherry-picking chair sticking and compared to Norbert Röttgen. But in 2012, and even more so after the lost election campaign in North Rhine-Westphalia, he had no support in his own party.
Faeser has support. Röttgen lost his position as Federal Environment Minister because the Chancellor at the time dropped him. That’s not Olaf Scholz’s style, even if he may have to live with the flaw that Faeser loses the election, not despite, but because she is the Federal Minister of the Interior.
