Jens Spahn and the CDU chairmanship: a man probes

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Health Minister Spahn: "The 2025 project starts today"

Photo: Xander Heinl / photothek / imago images

Jens Spahn is in a kind of in-between world these days.

Many things still have to be done, but actually many officials in his ministry have long been prepared for someone else to be sitting at his desk.

Everyone in the Union would still have to get used to this strange transition phase, said Spahn recently in a small circle - including himself. But he was not frustrated about it.

So be democracy.

Check it off, move on.

Spahn's calm is astonishing; for him it's actually been a dramatic week. The question is whether he will be a great man in the Union, a man with chancellor prospects, or whether he will have reached his peak at the age of 41, whether things will only go downhill now. His party has been in an unprecedented crisis since the election debacle at the end of September. It is looking for stability, a course, once again a new leadership, and Spahn obviously wants to be there when power is redistributed among the conservatives. There is not much to gain if the Union really ends up in the opposition: party chairmanship, parliamentary group chairmanship, plus the office of general secretary. That's it in halfway powerful positions.

"The 2025 project begins today," said Spahn in a recent interview with "Welt am Sonntag".

It sounded as if he were ready to take on all three posts at once - and the candidacy for chancellor in four years as well.

Whether Spahn will even become part of the new party leadership is currently completely open.

That’s surprising.

Objectively speaking, he should appear to many in the Union as an ideal cast.

Young but experienced.

A masterful networker with broad expertise, hard-working, but with a penchant for skilful self-marketing, in short: the most conspicuous, technically probably best Christian Democrat of his generation, a man who was made for the necessary new beginning of the CDU.

Instead, Spahn suddenly has to tremble.

This has to do with himself, with new doubts about his loyalty to Armin Laschet, but also with the process that the party is now facing. At the end of the month, the CDU wants to clarify how the new party leader will be elected, and depending on the situation, the members will be allowed to have a say.

It is completely unclear what the process will look like, who will enter the race and what chances are, when exactly the decisions will be made.

The only thing that is clear is that completely different types than Spahn could be in demand at the grassroots level.

Friedrich Merz or Carsten Linnemann, for example, the two economic politicians who embody more change than he does and who could enter the race without Corona or Groko legacy.

The ministerial office, which looks like an advantage on the outside, can be a mortgage on the inside, a burden.

Olaf Scholz felt this two years ago in the race for the SPD chairmanship, Spahn could face a similar fate.

But should he just give up because of that?

Without trying?

Last Saturday, Spahn stood on a stage in the Münster exhibition hall.

The Junge Union has invited to its Germany Day, the minister is one of the main speakers.

Merz, Linnemann and Ralph Brinkhaus, the parliamentary group chairman, are also invited to the meeting.

All candidates for the party leadership, all men, all Catholic and from North Rhine-Westphalia.

This is not about "showing off," calls Spahn into the hall.

"The Union is bigger than any of us." Spahn, the team player.

But over the next half hour he does everything possible to show those present: I can be expected, I have a plan, a vision for the Union in the 21st century.

What Spahn outlines doesn't sound like the agenda of a man who was once the darling of the CDU conservatives and the economic wing. Spahn calls for a "more active economic policy", rumbles against rich property and stock owners, calls for a discussion about an inheritance tax and paints a family picture that also includes same-sex partnerships. It seems as if Spahn wants to give himself and the Union a new profile, but not a right one, but rather a left, progressive one. At least at times there is icy silence among the party youth, who like to present themselves as the guardians of the pure CDU teaching. At an SPD party congress, Spahn would have received more cheers for such attitudes.

It remains to be seen whether the new sound helps or harms him. Some of his enemies already see Spahn as the Union's chief opportunist, even before Markus Söder, which certainly means something. It disturbs how the chameleon-like party friend has been sneaking through politics for years, how he gave the young conservatives at an early age, in the meantime presented himself as a sharp critic of Islam, and finally presented himself as an objective, responsible health minister. Now the Münsterländer is apparently making the next change - to become a social politician. Some people can no longer keep up.

What bothers his opponents: Spahn is a politician who not only seems to align his positions according to the laws of attention and quota, but also his acquaintances. In the Bundestag he has gathered many young MPs around him, in the Junge Union he is well-wired, they say. When Spahn's rival, parliamentary group leader Brinkhaus, appeared at the meeting of the party youth, so many delegates pestered him with such sharp questions that some older party colleagues at home asked themselves on the screen why the party youth felt this brass of all things at Brinkhaus. A questioner came from the JU Borken, Spahn's home association. It was probably pure coincidence, but the fact that some people immediately thought of Spahn speaks volumes.

Many CDU people are also irritated by the accuracy with which the minister has been approaching dazzling figures for years. Spahn staged a friendship with the Trump confidante and ambassador in Berlin, Richard Grenell. He traveled to Sebastian Kurz's election party in Austria in 2017. A few weeks ago, during the chancellor candidates' first TV triall, Spahn was having beer and pizza in the office of »Bild« editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt (see page XY). The next morning the tabloid published an annihilation of the appearance of the Chancellor candidate under the heading “Debate Debacle for Laschet”.

Spahn's big problem is that he now has many opponents in the party. He has annoyed conservatives with his change of position, some liberals consider him disloyal. There is blasphemy in the party, about Spahn's allegedly so few interviews with praise for Laschet, his sparse appearances with the candidate, while otherwise he has traveled to the most remote regions to every backbencher to maintain his contacts, about his small and large ones Teasing away from the microphones in the direction of Laschet's unfortunate and unorganized election campaign.

The fact that Spahn himself apparently had few scruples shortly before the federal election to criticize the chancellor candidate in a larger group was shown at a previously unknown donation dinner in Berlin at the end of August. Representatives of the start-up scene invited a good dozen entrepreneurs to attend. Lawrence Leuschner, co-founder of the e-scooter provider Tier, was present at the meeting, along with the IT entrepreneur Verena Pausder, and Christian Vollmann, founder of Nebenan.de.

Several participants in the group recall that the minister criticized the CDU election campaign at the dinner with unusually harsh criticism - and also the stumbling chancellor candidate.

When asked by a participant why there are so few young people in Laschet's team with their own topics, Spahn is said to have had a clear answer: "He's just not the right candidate for something like that."

Spahn himself denies having so disqualified Laschet at the meeting with the IT entrepreneurs.

But among those present the impression was that Spahn had actually already ticked off the choice: Because of the postal vote, even a strong final spurt would have brought little, Spahn would have argued, some trends could not be stopped.

The victory of the Social Democrats four weeks before the election was by no means a foregone conclusion.

An Allensbach poll on August 19 saw the Union eight percentage points ahead of the SPD, a shrinking but still comparatively comfortable lead.

When participants in the round addressed the survey, Spahn did not hesitate for a second to downplay the numbers.

The survey was carried out weeks ago and the Union's chances are negligible.

Spahn was ultimately to be proved right, but some founders were surprised by the openness of the alleged Laschet supporter.

When asked about his own ambitions, Spahn replied that it was "generally known that I would trust myself to the Chancellery".

The minister also has these representations rejected.

In general, Spahn finds the image that is drawn of him within the party to be deeply unjust, and in fact he is often criticized by Christian Democrats, who are suspicious of a healthy will to power.

The minister does not deny his ambition, but he and his people see the fact that, after his surprising candidacy for the CDU chairmanship in 2018, last year, he and his people as proof that he can also serve.

It was a gesture rarely seen in top politics.

In the party, however, it is also not forgotten that a little later, behind the scenes, Spahn sounded out the chances of his own candidate for chancellor, as SPIEGEL made public at the time.

Will Spahn back off again?

Now that the party is on the brink, without orientation, without power and leadership?

Or is it not even others' turn to step aside?

Spahn knows how quickly things can turn.

Suppose the next chairman would be elected at the party congress and the members were left out - he would suddenly be fully involved.

He has stable networks among the delegates, in the functionaries' camp and in the parliamentary group.

And if things go differently, he could still compete, member survey or not.

Basically, as his people see it, he has nothing to lose.

A scratch more or less at the age of 41, what the heck.

When in doubt, Spahn still has a lot of time to build up a new political perspective.

Or Spahn half renounced the chairmanship and instead supported a party friend, Carsten Linnemann, for example. Linnemann, currently still deputy chairman of the parliamentary group and head of the influential SME Union, has been a friend of Spahn for years. Both trusted each other blindly, it is said, whereby Linnemann's people fear that he could also be blind to Spahn's weaknesses.

For the popular Linnemann, Merz might get out of the race for party chairmanship, so the hope.

And with Linnemann as party leader, Spahn might also have better chances of being chairman of the parliamentary group, a position that is more important in the opposition than being chairman of the party, because here there is money, staff and guaranteed attention when there is a struggle with the chancellor in parliament.

This position would not be given for free either, Brinkhaus would have to give way, Spahn would have to be elected by the MPs.

But at least it's an option.