Germany’s SPD on the Rise: Olaf Scholz Aims to Succeed Merkel By Emulating Her
It turned out to be anything but. Hordes of hooded rioters cut a swath of destruction through the city and Scholz was forced to issue a public apology after the summit. He said he hadn’t seen any of it coming. When he left office, the local Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper said goodbye with the words: “Scholz’s departure for Berlin” is “also a relief” because of the G-20 disaster.
But it’s another scandal that still has the potential to catch up with him. At the end of 2016, the city-state of Hamburg waived a back-tax claim of €47 million euros against Warburg Bank. The bank had secured credits with dubious stock transactions in what would become the Cum-Ex scandal. When the question arose as to whether Hamburg would claim the money or let the matter lapse, bank executives visited Scholz at City Hall. He referred them to the city-state’s finance minister, and a short time later, the matter was dropped.
Did Scholz exert any influence over the decision? He vehemently denies that he did and claims he can’t recall his conversations with the bankers. The matter is not entirely settled, though. An investigative committee in Hamburg is currently taking a closer look at what happened, and if Scholz were to become chancellor, the committee would likely attract a lot more attention.
But will he? “Everything is going according to plan!” Such was the greeting offered by Wolfgang Schmidt, a senior official in the Finance Ministry who is, apart from his wife Britta Ernst, Scholz’s closest confidant. He is Scholz’s mastermind, spin doctor and eminence grise all at the same time. He has been so tightly interconnected with the candidate for close to 20 years that Schmidt has sometimes compared it to a marriage.
“The Right Candidate for Chancellor”
Schmidt slouches down into his chair, only once sitting up suddenly. The campaign has gone from a three-way fight to a two-way contest, he says, using his arms to demonstrate – alternately striking the tabletop with one hand and the other. Laschet or Scholz, Scholz or Laschet. Compared to his boss, he’s exploding with life – gregarious, approachable and emotional.
When he’s not talking, he’s tweeting, and not everyone in the SPD is particularly pleased by his antics. Some feel that a bit more humility would do him good.
For top politicians, having a loyal and competent inner circle is a vital condition for success, and Scholz has gathered a dedicated and devoted group around him over the years. It includes his spokesman, Steffen Hebestreit. He and Schmidt maintain an almost identical look: trimmed, graying beard, jeans, jacket and backpack. The vice chancellor’s other confidants are also, almost without exception, men around 50 – state secretaries Rolf Bösinger and Jörg Kukies, department for planning and strategy head Benjamin Mikfeld. The group is so homogeneous that it could prove problematic for the candidate.
Indeed, you have to look to Scholz’s extended group before you find a woman: Andrea Nahles, the former SPD party chair and parliamentary group leader. The two speak with each other regularly, away from the public eye. Schmidt also keeps in touch with her: When she led the Social Democrats, she wanted to make Scholz her candidate for chancellor. That’s how the two had planned it.
“I have always thought that Olaf Scholz was the right candidate for chancellor,” says Nahles, “and now it looks like I was right.” For two years after leaving politics, she kept an ironclad silence, but now she is speaking out in support of the SPD candidate. “Scholz is doing well, and the SPD’s current poll numbers are his success,” she says. “He has succeeded in instilling discipline in the SPD.” Nahles says that although Scholz is often described as being sober and dry, “he is actually a passionate politician.” Apparently, it’s an inner passion.
In her own way, the failed party leader is even campaigning for Scholz: Nahles could recently be seen putting up campaign posters for Scholz in her hometown of Weiler in North Rhine-Westphalia.
After her resignation, the SPD voted for new leadership in 2019. In that race, Scholz lost to Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans. It was a significant humiliation for Scholz, losing to two outsiders. It was a time of deep division in the party, and it was sliding in the polls. In December 2019, polling institute Forsa showed the party enjoyed just 11 percent support. In a talk show, Esken said that Scholz was not a staunch Social Democrat. It was a moment at which many would have forgiven Scholz for backing out of politics. But he didn’t. Instead, he met with the new party heads. There was no way either of them could run for the Chancellery since they didn’t have the necessary connections within the party. They needed Scholz. And he needed them.
The election of Walter-Borjans and Esken was far from the first time the party had shown a lack of faith in Scholz. Back in 2003, at an SPD party conference in Bochum, only 52.6 percent of party delegates confirmed him as the party’s secretary general – essentially the absolute minimum.
Still, Scholz knew he needed the two new party leaders in order to continue playing a relevant role. He had the well-known name, while Esken and Walter-Borjans had access to the party, which they had to pacify. That was the deal.
It didn’t work very well at first. The two new SPD leaders, inexperienced as they were, unsettled the party with initiatives that they didn’t coordinate with the other Social Democrats. Party Secretary General Lars Klingbeil had to intervene, introducing regular conference calls. Every Monday and Tuesday, at 8 a.m., the five most important party members were to confer with each other: the two party chairs, Scholz, Klingbeil and parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich.
In addition, Scholz and the two party leaders meet regularly. Despite the greater coordination, however, the relationship with Walter-Borjans remained complicated. The former North Rhine-Westphalia finance minister can’t stand Scholz. He sees himself as the party’s chief finance expert and suffers from the fact that Scholz, as the German finance minister, casts the much bigger shadow.
Sail Away
At the same time, though, the relationship between Esken and Scholz has developed well. Unnoticed by the public, a new German SPD dream team has been formed. They text each other, they talk frequently, and they trust each other. When he was tapped as the party’s chancellor candidate last year, his new confidant Esken cheered on Twitter: “Olaf’s got the stuff to be chancellor.” Overall, the deal has worked surprisingly well. Scholz compares the SPD to an oil tanker. “It takes a while to steer it,” he says in his office on Tuesday, once again back to acting as he imitates a big ship, using his arms to depict the maneuvers that keep the tanker on course. Satisfied, he lets it sail away.