CDU power struggle: Norbert Röttgen makes Ellen Demuth "number two"

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Ellen Humuth

Photo: Bert Bostelmann / DER SPIEGEL

Norbert Röttgen, candidate for the CDU chairmanship, wants to make the Rhineland-Palatinate Christian Democrat Ellen Demuth the party's chief strategist if he wins.

The 38-year-old is intended to chair a steering group that is to modernize the CDU and anchor it in new milieus.

»I consider Ellen Demuth to be a great political talent.

She thinks strategically and is very well networked in the party, "said Röttgen to SPIEGEL:" She is female, young and digital and thus embodies everything that makes the CDU modern.

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Demuth told SPIEGEL that the party needed a major overhaul in order to survive in party competition.

"The CDU has to modernize to stay in the middle," she said.

The CDU must place a special focus on gender equality policy.

"One thing is clear: a party in which 80 percent of the district chairmen and members of the Bundestag are men no longer represents our society in all its breadth," says Demuth: "I consider equal participation of women and men to be the most important modernization task in the CDU . "

Demuth has been a member of the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament and is responsible for the issues of equality and digital policy in the parliamentary group.

Röttgen has provided additional members for the steering committee that is to reorganize the CDU, including the chairwoman of the Herrhausen Society Anna Herrhausen, the Bundestag members Elisabeth Motschmann, Andreas Nick, Johann Wadephul, Kai Whittaker and the Leopoldina researcher Christiane Kuhl.

Röttgen originally wanted to propose Demuth as a candidate for the post of Secretary General.

The postponement of the party congress thwarted this plan.

In view of the close proximity to the federal election, Röttgen would now hold on to Paul Ziemiak as General Secretary if he were to become Chairman.

“I really appreciate his fairness.

He has proven that over and over again during the entire candidate process, «said Röttgen.

With the Personnel Demuth, Röttgen also wants to score among the women in the CDU.

With around a third of the delegates at the party congress, you are a decisive factor.

Röttgen is applying for the CDU chairmanship alongside Friedrich Merz and Armin Laschet.

The decision was originally supposed to be made in April.

Because of the pandemic, however, it was postponed twice.

It is now planned to bring about the decision at a largely digital party conference in January.

The race is considered open.

The unresolved power issue has been burdening the CDU for months.

The competition between the three candidates was recently so tough that the outgoing party chairman Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer spoke of a "ruinous" race for the CDU.

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