Scholz Insists He Will Run for German Chancellor Amid Doubts
(Bloomberg) -- Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he would be his party’s candidate in the upcoming German election, brushing aside speculation that the Social Democrats would choose a more popular official to run in his place.
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His comments come after the German tabloid Bild reported that the SPD leadership would hold an emergency meeting Tuesday to discuss who would be the party’s chancellor candidate.
“The SPD and I are going into this election campaign to win,” Scholz told RTL-ntv in an interview Tuesday on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. “The SPD leadership has supported me all the time and this will also remain the case — there is a huge degree of unity within the SPD leadership.”
The SPD’s deputy leaders are planning to hold a regular conference call to organize the campaign ahead of the Feb. 23 snap election, party spokesman Dominik Dicken said via text message, adding that the Bild “report is false.”
Speculation has been growing that Scholz’s ambition for a second term could be derailed given his poor approval ratings. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who is regularly leading in popularity polls, is seen by many in the party as the better alternative to Scholz.
Former party leader Sigmar Gabriel on Tuesday openly questioned a second Scholz candidacy. There’s growing resistance against Scholz at the party base, Gabriel wrote on X. “What is now needed is brave political leadership,” he said.
Members of the SPD’s influential North Rhine-Westphalia group also distanced themselves from Scholz. “We are hearing a lot of support for Boris Pistorius,” SPD lawmakers Dirk Wiese and Wiebke Esdar, heads of the caucus group, said, according to the local newspaper Rheinische Post. “With a certain distance, Scholz’s work and his decisions for our country will surely be seen more positively.”
Party co-leaders Lars Klingbeil and Saskia Esken have so far voiced their support for Scholz, who hasn’t been officially nominated as his party’s candidate. Social Democrats are expected to pick a chancellor candidate at a party congress in January.
The SPD currently garners some 16% support in national polls and are in third place behind the Christian Democrats and the far-right Alternative for Germany. The Greens were at 10% in an INSA report published Saturday.
(Updates with Scholz comments on the campaign from the first paragraph.)
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