There is little doubt that Jochen Partsch would have been elected mayor of Darmstadt for a third time if the Green politician had run again. However, he did not do so, but recommended the citizens the party friend Michael Kolmer.

Jochen Remmert

Airport editor and correspondent Rhein-Main-Süd.

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He does not even try to copy the expansive dominance of the incumbent. Kolmer uses the numerous opportunities given to him as head of the key departments of mobility, planning and climate protection to set brands. He does this consistently and publicly. He accepts protests, such as those in connection with the dismantling of parking spaces, the redistribution of traffic areas in favor of public transport, cycling and pedestrians.

Kolmer now faces eight applicants. According to political scientists at TU Darmstadt, who have taken a closer look at the local voting behaviour of the Darmstadt population in a study, the next Lord Mayor will also come from the ranks of a party that is established throughout Germany.

The researchers conclude this from the behavior of the previous direct election, in which most voters had made their cross with the representative of such a party. In fact, Partsch won 50.4 percent of the vote in the first round of voting, while Social Democrat Michael Siebel managed just 16.7 percent in the former SPD stronghold of Darmstadt.

In third place, however, was Kerstin Lau, parliamentary group leader of the Darmstadt group Uffbasse. The representative of the party, which is more left-wing in the political spectrum, managed, despite being an outsider and purely municipal base, to unite 12.4 percent of the vote - only four percentage points less than the SPD candidate. Michael Ziemek of the Darmstadt voters' association, who withdrew his candidacy a week before the election, is now also campaigning for them. The voters' association said that Ziemek wanted to increase Lau's chances of reaching the run-off election with his renunciation. She had competed in the municipal election in 2021 for the first time and had received a seat in the Darmstadt city council with a good two percent of the votes.

Skepticism towards the established parties

The assumption that in the end a candidate of the established parties will prevail was long regarded as an iron certainty in the Rhineland-Palatinate state capital Mainz, for example. But after more than 70 years, the mayor of Mainz is no longer a social democrat. Nino Haase does not belong to any party and clearly defeated the Green competitor Christian Viering in the Mainz run-off election on 5 March, namely with more than 63 percent of the vote. Mareike von Jungenfeld, who had to compete for the SPD as a replacement candidate for Michael Ebling, who had risen to become Rhineland-Palatinate's Minister of the Interior, performed disastrously with 13.8 percent and had nothing to do with the final decision.

Skepticism about the established parties, to which the Greens have long belonged, is growing in many places. Whether Uffbasse and thus her candidate Kerstin Lau can possibly benefit in Darmstadt is open.

The new party Volt, which is entering the race with city councillor Holger Klötzner, has the advantage of being able to offer both: In 2021, it quickly seized the opportunity to enter the city government and negotiated the important ministries of digitization and education for itself and Holger Klötzner, after it was no longer enough for a continuation of the green-black government alliance. At the same time, Volt is regarded as a young movement and thus does not yet belong to the party establishment in the perception of voters.

Appearances of national celebrities

With his experience as an incumbent head of department, the Christian Democrat Paul Georg Wandrey can also advertise and thus recommend himself as a candidate for the office of Lord Mayor. He is responsible for building supervision and order. However, he is the candidate of a party that is the largest opposition party in the federal government, but could not even put up its own candidate in the previous OB election in Darmstadt. This did not testify to a great creative will.

Whether the election campaign appearances of SPD federal chairmen Saskia Esken and Kevin Kühnert will help the former Darmstadt party and parliamentary group leader Hanno Benz to the mayor's office is also open. For two years, Benz, son of the former Social Democratic town hall chief Peter Benz, led the party, which gradually lost support in the local elections in Darmstadt over many years. In 2016, he did not accept his mandate for the newly elected city parliament, after the SPD had collapsed with only 17.2 percent in the voters' favor. Certainly not optimal conditions for revitalizing Darmstadt's old social democratic tradition.

If Ulrich Franke of the Left Party, Harald Uhl of the Free Voters, Gerburg Hesse-Hanbuch of the Free Democrats or the satire party representative Mirko Steiner were to move up to the top of the Darmstadt administration, the surprise would be much greater.

However, this will be decided by the voters on 19 March and possibly only finally in a run-off election on 2 April, if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round.