Michael Heym retains his post as deputy CDU parliamentary faction leader in Thuringia - despite also internally fierce criticism of his position on the AFD. He was briefly re-elected at a meeting of the parliamentary group in Erfurt on Wednesday as one of three alternates. Heym received eleven votes or 52 percent, his opponent Christoph Zippel ten votes.
The new CDU parliamentary group consists of 21 deputies. In addition to Heym, two other deputies were elected for Group leader Mike Mohring and the Parliamentary Director Maik Kowalleck.
In the parliamentary group, a dispute has been piling up over the course of their party chairman since the state election. Mohring himself received only 66 percent in the re-election to the faction leader. Heym's narrow election and the poor performance of the other candidates are a further dampener for Mohring, who proposed the candidates for the posts.
"There is a deep mistrust of the group leader," says a CDU deputy after the meeting the SPIEGEL. The negotiating situation with the other parties has deteriorated for Mohring, because he no longer has all the deputies behind him.
And next week there will be another conflict in the group. On Tuesday leaked that the left proposes the former Minister of Agriculture Birgit Keller as the future President of the Landtag. In the CDU is not yet clear how they should position themselves to the proposal. Mohring postponed a conversation on Wednesday. Keller was a member of the SED in GDR times, which should be seen critically by some in the CDU.
Heym had defended his parliamentary mandate in Schmalkalden-Meinigen I in the election in late October just against an AfD candidate. After the defeat of the CDU, he had openly shown up for talks with the right-wing populists and received a lot of criticism: "In mathematical terms, it is enough for an alliance of AfD, CDU and FDP - I think that should not be ruled out in the first place," he had said "You do not do democracy a favor by barking out a quarter of the electorate."
Heym later received support from 17 Thuringian CDU officials, including the member of parliament Jörg Kellner. He excludes a coalition with Left and AfD, nonetheless: "We've seen what happens when you leave the AfD out, it's the opposite of what we wanted." The right-wing party has doubled.
CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak had called the attack "crazy".