The right-wing antiglobalist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is poised to secure its second mayoral position. Residents of Pirna—a town of 37,000 situated in Saxony—brushed off the state intelligence agency’s recent ‘extremist’ classification of the party and voted AfD candidate Tim Lochner into office.
After finishing first by a nearly ten-point margin in the town’s initial round of voting late last month, Lochner, a 53-year-old master carpenter—who isn’t a member of AfD, but ran on its ticket—again bested his opponents from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Free Voters in the second round of voting on Sunday, December 17th, securing 38.5% of the vote according to the final tally.
CDU candidate Kathrin Dollinger-Knuth, with the backing of the SPD, Greens, and Left Party, only managed to garner 31.4% of the vote while Ralf Thiele, who launched his campaign as a Free Voters candidate but later went independent, collected 30.1%.
On Sunday evening after all of the votes were counted, Lochner, who has angered Germany’s old parties and legacy press by drawing attention to Germany’s ongoing population exchange, thanked his supporters and said: “I promise I will see through the seven years,” adding that he would work to solve problems with “calmness.”
In a post to X, formerly Twitter, AfD co-leader Alice Weidel described Lochner’s victory as a historic moment. “Congratulations to Pirna! #AfD candidate Tim #Lochner was elected the first AfD mayor there, far ahead of his competitors. Thanks to the many voters who made this historic result possible for the AfD!” she wrote.
Predictably, the left-liberal parties reacted to the AfD’s victory with dismay, claiming that it is a clear sign that German democracy is under threat.
In response to Lochner’s win, Left Party politician Clara Bünger tweeted:
Advent, Advent, democracy is burning. A mayor who ran for the AfD, which was recently classified as “certainly right-wing extremist” in Saxony. All democratic parties must now act together. Civil society in #Pirna needs support.
The state association of the Greens in Saxony, like the Left Party politician, repeated tired claims that the AfD is somehow anti-democratic. Writing on X, the Greens said: “We stand firmly on the side of the democratic forces in #Pirna and the region. We must now do everything we can to strengthen our coexistence and strengthen trust in our democracy again.”
The AfD’s landmark victory in Saxony represents the third of its kind for the party, following Robert Sesselmann’s first-place finish in district council elections in Thuringia’s Sonnenberg district and Hannes Loth’s win in the mayoral election in the town of Raguhn-Jeßnitz in Saxony-Anhalt last summer.
