Top candidate of the Berlin SPD: Steffen Krach is expected to overthrow Kai Wegner next year

Steffen Krach is expected to be the SPD's top candidate for the Berlin House of Representatives election in just over a year, challenging Kai Wegner (CDU). This was confirmed to the Berliner Zeitung by SPD sources, and several media outlets reported the same. The 46-year-old currently holds the office of Regional President of Hanover. Between 2014 and 2021, he served as State Secretary in the Berlin Senate Department for Science .
For months, SPD state chairmen Martin Hikel and Nicola Böcker-Giannini have been searching intensively for a candidate. Steffen Krach is now considered the likely solution for several reasons: He has gained political experience in Berlin and beyond, is considered a fresh face with new ideas, and is relatively untainted within the party, which is plagued by trench warfare.
Hikel and Böcker-Giannini have not commented on the rumors, and Krach has also remained silent so far. Like many Berlin Social Democrats, this is a possible reason: The two SPD leaders originally planned to present their personnel proposal on September 22nd, but it was to remain secret until then.
That didn't work out – and the personnel issue says a lot about the state of the Berlin SPD. The state association, which has been reeling from one electoral defeat to the next for years, is in a desolate state. Everyone is beating everyone else up. It's hard to find common ground. Apparently, the situation is so bad that someone from outside was sought, party insiders describe.
The history of the Berlin SPD over the past 20 years is one of self-dwarfing. In the 2006 elections, Klaus Wowereit, as head of a red-red coalition, achieved a dream result: 30.8 percent.
At that time, a young man, barely noticed by the public, was making a career in the Berlin SPD: Steffen Krach became personal assistant to the Senator for Education, Research and Science, Jürgen Zöllner, in 2007. Soon after, the 30-year-old became Zöllner's office manager. Steffen Krach remained in office under Zöllner's successor, Sandra Scheeres. One year later, however, Krach left Berlin and became head of the Federal-State Coordination Office of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag.
When he returned to Scheeres as State Secretary for Science at the end of 2014, the Berlin SPD was no longer the same: a weary Wowereit had resigned that summer. A fight for his successor ensued. Three grandees competed against each other: party leader Jan Stöß, parliamentary group leader Raed Saleh, and Senator for Urban Development Michael Müller. The latter prevailed and became Governing Mayor.
Second-place finisher Stöß withdrew, leaving Müller a permanent opponent of the ambitious Saleh. First, Saleh, along with Franziska Giffey , ousted him from the party leadership; later, Müller was forced to cede the Red City Hall to Giffey and fled to the Bundestag. At the beginning of this year, Saleh orchestrated a coup against the "old, white man" Müller during the new election, causing him to lose his mandate.
None of this has helped Saleh's reputation, nor has it helped the party. For the SPD, one election debacle follows another. Meanwhile, the Social Democrats have reached fifth place in the polls. And Saleh came in last in his bid to remain party leader.
Saleh has recently recovered, his leadership of the parliamentary group is rock solid – and until recently there were rumors that he himself would be confident of being a top candidate for next year.
But now the rather weak party leadership has apparently pulled off a minor coup with Steffen Krach. The 46-year-old is considered a fresh prospect with little to nothing to do with the Berlin snake pit. Conveniently, he moved to his hometown of Hanover in 2021 and became regional president there.
But Krach isn't completely unaffected by Berlin's hustle and bustle. A look back to 2016 helps. After the election, Müller brought the science department—and with it State Secretary Krach—into his Senate Chancellery. This had at least one main and one secondary effect: Berlin's scientific community benefited, and Müller was soon considered a better science senator than a Governing Mayor. A secondary effect: Krach automatically became Saleh's opponent. Especially since, like Müller, he is considered a pragmatist, whereas Saleh has been increasingly leaning left, at least since the Left Party's recent triumph.
It's said that Saleh himself has now leaked Krach's candidacy. He peddled the idea over the weekend – until the first candidates jumped at the chance. There are two theories as to why Saleh did this: He wanted to humiliate the two presiding officers, to show them that they weren't even capable of keeping the candidate's name secret until they were ready to present it. And he wanted to distract from the fact that Krach wasn't his idea.
And Steffen Krach himself? He must hope that the party leadership that brought him in will now also support and protect him. It's said that he needs ten to twenty people who are loyal to him. According to the motto: All for one – and everyone else has to be reconciled to something else so they at least keep their feet still. The goal can only be to make Steffen Krach known. So far, only a few hundred people in Berlin know him.
Berliner-zeitung