Germany’s interior minister announces run for state office
BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s interior minister said Thursday that she plans to run for governor of her home state this fall but to remain the country’s top security official in the meantime, a politically risky course that already is drawing criticism from opponents.
“I’m the first woman to head the Interior Ministry, and I would like to be the first female governor of Hesse,” Nancy Faeser told news magazine Der Spiegel. “I’m running.”
Faeser, a member of the center-left Social Democrats, has led the ministry since Germany’s current governing coalition took office in late 2021.
Her potential candidacy for the Hesse state election, which is slated for Oct. 8, was the subject of rumors in recent months in Germany’s capital. .
Members of the political opposition criticized Faeser’s plan to stay on as interior minister. The conservative Christian Democrats called on her to resign while she’s a gubernatorial candidate.
Faeser, for her part, said she was capable of being both a candidate and federal minister and would give her current job the same effort she always has.
“I took on responsibility for a very difficult office in very difficult times,” she told Der Spiegel. “And this responsibility requires me to carry out my tasks just as clearly and seriously as before.”
Running for state-level political office while remaining in a Cabinet role has not always gone well for past German ministers. In 2012, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel fired her environment minister, Norbert Roettgen, after he led the Christian Democrats to a historic loss in state elections in North Rhine Westphalia.
Credit: Germany’s interior minister announces run for state office
