Fresh on the heels of a breakthrough victory in Thuringia, where the conservative, antiglobalist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) had its candidate—for the first time in the party’s history—elected to serve as the district administrator in Sonneberg, the AfD took yet another historic step forward this weekend as its candidate won a mayoral election in Saxony-Anhalt.
In Sunday’s run-off mayoral election in the small town of Raguhn-Jeßnitz in the Anhalt-Bitterfeld district, Hannes Loth, who serves as a member of the state’s parliament for the AfD, defeated his opponent Nils Naumann, who’s not affiliated with any party. Loth garnered 51.1% of votes, compared to 48.9% collected by his rival, the Berlin-based newspaper Junge Freiheit reports.
The election’s result marks the first time that an AfD party member will assume the role of mayor in Germany.
Reacting to his victory, Loth, a farmer who studied agricultural engineering, said: “I am totally surprised, flabbergasted, and I would like to thank all voters,” adding that the result was due to “a symbiosis of my good work here on the city council and the positive mood for the AfD in Germany at the moment.”
The AfD politician has been a fixture of the community for decades. “I was born in Wolfen, 12 kilometers away because the maternity clinic was there,” he told the press. “But I’ve lived in Raguhn-Jeßnitz for 42 years.” Prior to the run-off election, Loth noted that he and Naumann, who also grew up in Raguhn-Jeßnitz “used to play volleyball on the same club team.”
Loth’s opponent told the German Press Agency (DPA) that it did not matter to him that the town would have an AfD mayor in the future. “I’m concerned with facts and objectivity and not with the party,” he said.
Top AfD officials reacted to Sunday’s result with elation. Kay-Uwe Ziegler, a lawmaker in the Bundestag called the election victory the “event of the year, perhaps of the decade,” for the party.
AfD co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla both congratulated their colleague. “Congratulations to Hannes Loth, the first AfD mayor in Germany. In Raguhn-Jeßnitz he was able to clearly assert himself against his opponent. Thank you to all voters, supporters, and campaigners,” Weidel wrote on Twitter.
Chrupalla, for his part, wrote: “Hannes Loth becomes the AfD first mayor,” adding this result is the “new normal. We are a people’s party. Step by step we bring about a change for the better and implement our policy in the interest of the citizens. We paint Germany in the blue of hope.”
A total of 7,800 of the approximately 8,800 residents of the small town in the southeast of Saxony-Anhalt were eligible to vote. Voter turnout was around 61.5%.
The AfD’s second electoral victory in two weeks comes as support for and approval of Scholz’s ruling left-liberal, globalist ‘traffic light’ coalition has fallen to dismal lows, with just 40% of the population supporting its members, far short of the majority required to govern.
Presently, a mere 28% of Germans are satisfied with the governing SDP-Green-FDP coalition while 64% are dissatisfied. Chancellor Scholz (SDP) isn’t faring much better, with just 31% of survey respondents saying they’re satisfied with his leadership. At the same time, 58% reported being dissatisfied.
The AfD, for some time now, has been consistently polling in second place nationwide, at around 19-20%, ahead of all the ruling coalition parties and not far behind the Atlanticist establishment CDU party.
In light of the 20% nationwide figure, Thuringia’s spy chief sparked controversy when he called one-fifth of the German population—16 million people—Nazi trash, referring to them specifically as the “brown dregs” of German society.
