Enlarge image
Candidate duo Joana Cotar and Joachim Wundrak on Wednesday in the Bundestag: Meuthen's supporters
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / dpa
Alice Weidel is long gone, but Tino Chrupalla stayed a little longer.
The parliamentary group chairman and the party leader have just presented their joint candidacy as a top AfD duo when the competitors appear in the Bundestag's Jakob-Kaiser-Haus.
Joana Cotar and Joachim Wundrak shake Chrupalla's hand briefly, despite the masks they forget the rules of distance at this moment.
A short exchange of words, a few niceties, then 48-year-old Cotar and 65-year-old Wundrak appear in front of the media.
It is the starting shot for a short, internal pre-election campaign in the AfD - a novelty in the eight-year history of the party: This time the grassroots will decide which of the two teams will lead the AfD in the federal election campaign.
The selection process begins on May 17th, and the result should be known on May 25th, according to the plan.
In 2017, a federal party congress set up the top candidate duo, when the delegates in Cologne voted for Alexander Gauland and Alice Weidel.
So this time around 32,000 members should judge it.
The fact that two teams are competing is an expression of the division of a party whose camps have not found each other for a year and a half: Cotar and Wundrak represent the so-called moderate forces around Chrupalla's co-party leader Jörg Meuthen.
Chrupalla himself and Weidel also rely on the support of the right-wing, in some cases right-wing extremist wing of the party - including that of the Thuringian state chief Björn Höcke.
Enlarge image
AfD politicians Chrupalla and Cotar on May 5, 2021 in the foyer of the Jakok-Kaiser-Haus
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / dpa
Even the way to the member survey was part of the bitter internal power struggle.
Chrupalla's opponent at the top of the AfD, Jörg Meuthen, had enforced the procedure by a majority in the spring with a board resolution and launched an online survey at the grassroots level in March, in which 87 percent (with a meager participation of 7,400 valid votes from 31,000 members contacted) ) spoke out in favor of a top duo by the base.
Meuthen thus thwarted the plans of internal party opponents early on to ensure an early decision at the party congress in Dresden at the beginning of April - possibly in favor of Weidel and Chrupalla.
On the morning before the start of the party congress, Weidel had postponed her candidacy for the time being, with reference to the decision of the membership procedure.
The actual candidate search also revealed the cracks in the party, even if Weidel and Chrupalla claimed at their appearance on Wednesday that there were "no camps".
By early Tuesday afternoon, Cotar and Wundrak had rushed forward with an explanation of their candidacy.
Before that, Wundrak, a former lieutenant general of the Bundeswehr and top AfD candidate in Lower Saxony, had phoned Chrupalla and, as he describes it, asked him whether Chrupalla wanted to compete with Cotar.
The answer was to be interpreted in such a way that Chrupalla had not intended this, said Wundrak on the sidelines of the press conference.
Thereupon he finally decided to run alongside Cotar.
Enlarge image
AfD candidate duo Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla on May 5, 2021 in Berlin
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / dpa
Cotar and Chrupalla confirm that they have been in contact. Cotar claims to have recently submitted an offer to Chrupalla for a double candidacy. "West / East, woman / man," she would have liked. But what was "not accepted", Chrupalla said "neither yes nor no" and did not respond, which she "regrets very much". Weidel, in turn, had only made her candidacy public on Tuesday evening in a ZDF broadcast with Markus Lanz, her willingness had already leaked before.
Unsurprisingly, AfD boss Meuthen welcomed the candidacy of the Cotar / Wundrak duo: they are "highly qualified candidates."
But it won't be easy for both of them.
Your strategic disadvantage: You are largely unknown in public - and probably also in parts of the AfD base.
Wundrak openly admitted that: Now it is a matter of "catching up with the others" for him and Cotar.
Another drawback: Both come from the west, Cotar from Hesse and Wundrak from Lower Saxony, unlike Weidel (Baden-Württemberg) and Chrupalla (Saxony).
Chrupalla referred to his result as the top candidate in Saxony and to the fact that he was building on the "support" of the East German state associations.
In the end, it's not just about the AfD faces for the federal election campaign, but also about how strong the Meuthen camp is. Most recently, the party leader and his comrades-in-arms suffered severe defeats in the design of the election program at the federal party conference in Dresden, including against the folk-nationalist camp around Höcke - for example when calling for a German exit from the EU and a strict no to family reunification for refugees.
"We are the better offer for the party," said Cotar, it was about "covering both spectra".
Nevertheless, she defended once again the cancellation of the right-wing extremist Andreas Kalbitz's membership, which Meuthen had taken care of in May through a board resolution against Weidel and Chrupalla, among others.
She was not involved in it, but the "decision about Kalbitz was the right one, it should have been made much earlier."
Wundrak, who failed as mayor candidate in Hanover in 2019 with 4.6 percent, in turn declared: "Of course I advocate demarcation to the extreme right." For him, who, as a former officer, had defended the free democratic basic order from the beginning, was that "of course".
How the two will work together with the extreme wing in the event of their formation as a top duo is uncertain. They were asked on Tuesday in Berlin whether they would perform together with Höcke in the election campaign. A short silence, a mutual look, then both give the same, evasive answer: "That will have to be decided."
