Interior Minister Georg Maier is supposed to lead the SPD into the state elections in September and keep it in government. The 56-year-old was elected the Social Democrats' top candidate at a state delegates' conference in Erfurt on Saturday with 84.8 percent of the votes cast.
Maier reaffirmed the SPD's claim to government and announced that he wanted to place more emphasis on social policy. There were candidacies for several candidate positions behind Maier. The Social Democrats, who have been part of the red-red-green government coalition since 2014, are open to talks with all parties except the AfD. The SPD has been involved in four state governments in Thuringia since the stateification - twice with the CDU and twice together with the Left and the Greens. The state elections on September 1st are expected to be difficult with a strong AfD and theCDU and the Left behind it, with a difficult majorities expected after the state election. “We want to help ensure that Thuringian gets a democratic majority government,” said Maier, who has been Interior Minister since 2017.