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Martin Vincentz, AfD state chairman in North Rhine-Westphalia.
© Thomas Banneyer/dpa
The moderate Martin Vincentz remains AfD state leader in North Rhine-Westphalia.
He wants to keep the party away from the extremist fringe.
But an opponent from within the party also makes it onto the board.
Marl - The moderate chairman of the North Rhine-Westphalia AfD, Martin Vincentz, will lead the state party for another two years.
A party conference in Marl on Saturday re-elected the 37-year-old doctor to lead the AfD NRW with 78.33 percent of the vote.
According to the party, it was the best result to date in the election of a state chairman in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Vincentz wants to take action against extremist forces in the NRW state association and, with this course, managed to initially rally the delegates behind him without extensive debates and arguments.
Unlike in his first election two years ago, the incumbent party leader did not have an opposing candidate.
Also opponents of Vincentz on the board
However, Vincentz's moderate camp received a setback in the evening during the election for further board positions.
The non-attached member of the Bundestag, Matthias Helferich, won one of the five advisory positions.
Helferich is controversial because of statements made in older chats.
He later did not deny that he had described himself as a “friendly face of the Nazis” in one of the chats, but the term was simply an attribution by left-wing bloggers whom he had “satirized”.
The party executive should not see itself as “a guiding sword” for a certain camp, but rather must be a “shield for everyone,” said Helferich.
He called for solidarity with the AfD youth organization in North Rhine-Westphalia, which had been classified as a suspected right-wing extremist case by the state Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
“One questioner commented on the election by saying that with Helferich in the party executive committee, “the next civil war” would arise.
Vincentz had previously announced that within the party he would not allow “individual elements who repeatedly provoke to damage our party”.
Not only the attacks on the AfD from outside, but also the “attacks from within” are major challenges.
Vincentz is targeting the federal election
The father of two daughters has been state leader of the NRW-AfD since February 2022 and also leads the state parliamentary group.
In his application speech, Vincentz swore his state association would achieve strong results in the NRW local elections and the 2025 federal election.
The right-wing populist AfD got 5.4 percent in the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia in May 2022.
Surveys recently saw the AfD in the most populous federal state at 13 to 15 percent.
According to Vincentz, the AfD NRW has grown from around 4,750 members in 2022 to currently around 7,050 members.
Almost 2,000 applications for membership are currently being processed.
This means that the AfD is still by far the smallest party in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The eloquent state chairman is also said to have federal political ambitions for a future chairmanship of the federal AfD.
He told the delegates that the state presidency was “the second best job in the world” after the federal presidency.
Due to its size, the NRW state association is the “significant building block for a strong parliamentary group”.
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Vincentz emphasized his successes in increasing the number of members since the 2022 state elections, which were the “political freezing point” for the party in North Rhine-Westphalia.
He wants to turn the AfD into a “modern conservative right-wing party”.
He said to the applause of the delegates that he did not want performances by “drag queens” in kindergartens or “Sharia police” in schoolyards.
He sharply criticized the government's Corona protection measures at the time.
Children should never be locked up at home again.
Vincentz rejected the accusation made by North Rhine-Westphalia Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU), who described the AfD as a “Nazi party”.
The opposite is the case.
“There are people here who have genuine and genuine concern for the country.”
React “coolly and cleverly”.
Vincentz called on the party to act “coolly and cleverly” in view of the debate about banning the AfD and the classification of Junge Alternative NRW as a suspected right-wing extremist case.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution is an “enemy” and “far stronger” than the AfD.
There is no point in the AfD “running patriotically to its own destruction with a saber drawn.”
But other sounds were also heard in the speeches at the party conference.
The former state party leader Rüdiger Lucassen called for people to take a front against what he described as the “politically exploited Office for the Protection of the Constitution”.
“The Office for the Protection of the Constitution must not be a benchmark for us,” said Lucassen.
The party conference in an event hall in Marl was accompanied by loud demonstrations and protests against the AfD, which, according to police figures, were attended by around 2,000 people.
dpa