Naumann to Rescue SPD?

The German Social Democrats (SPD) continue to lose ground and now find themselves marginalized in the big cities:

Support for the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, rose 2 percentage points to 35 percent, the weekly survey by polling company Forsa for Stern magazine and RTL television found. The SPD, led by Kurt Beck, dropped 4 percentage points to 25 percent, the lowest score since August 2004. The parties were level as recently as Nov. 22.

The 10 percentage point gap between the two parties, the most since May last year, will unsettle the Social Democrats as they prepare for an election in the northwestern city-state of Bremen on May 13, Germany’s only state ballot this year. The SPD has governed in the port city since the end of World War II.

Reports of manipulations amid primaries in Hamburg, another city-state, “raised doubts about the SPD’s overall competency,” Forsa Managing Director Manfred Guellner said in an interview. In the current nationwide debate about improving childcare, SPD leaders “only talked about money, about the costs, rather than the benefits for families and children,” further damaging the party’s standing, he said.

Professor Franz Walter, writing in Der Spiegel, believes the problem is with the party leadership. In the large urban areas, the party is dominated by public sector employees and the leadership has lost all connection with the "base".  Dynamic or creative individuals are not welcome.

Auch starke Vorsitzende kann die Großstadt-SPD schwer ertragen. Alles kommt darauf an, das wohltarierte System von Gruppen-, Geschlechter- und Wohnortproporzen nicht durcheinander zu bringen. Profilierte Führungspersönlichkeiten, eigenwillige Außenseiter, überhaupt ein Übermaß an neuen, schwer steuerbaren Mitgliedern werden abgestoßen.

As if in response to this criticism, the Hamburg SPD has announced that it will field Michael Naumann as candidate for mayor. Naumann was the minister for culture under Gerhard Schroeder and is now the publisher of Die Zeit. I met Michael Naumann when he was running Henry Holt in New York City ten years ago.  I found him to be a very charming Bon Vivant – rather aristocratic; hard to imagine him in the rough and tumble of local politics.  But the SPD needs to find a way to stop hemmorhaging both members and voters, so perhaps this is a shrewd choice.