Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has passed another political milestone after eastern voters elected the first city mayor affiliated with the far-right party.
Voters in Pirna, a city of 40,000 people in the eastern state of Saxony, backed as their next mayor Tim Lochner, a 53-year-old carpenter and independent candidate, with 38.5 per cent of the vote in a run-off poll.
AfD co-leader Alice Weidel described Sunday’s result as “historic” and an encouraging sign in advance of state elections next September in Saxony. Long the most popular party in the eastern state, AfD has about one third of voter support in Saxony, according to polls.
Political rivals criticised the election strategy of two centre-right rival candidates in Pirna for splitting the vote. They took 43 per cent between them.
Mr Lochner, who is not an AfD member, agreed to run as a candidate for the party. After Sunday’s result, he said he would “meet all town hall employees to test their loyalty”.
“I think I am a good team player,” he added, promising to “see things through in the next seven years”.
His election is the latest victory for the decade-old AfD, which began life as an anti-EU bailout party and then pivoted towards anti-immigration, anti-Muslim politics.
Though represented in all of Germany’s 16 state parliaments, and the federal Bundestag chamber in Berlin, it polled just 10 per cent in the 2021 federal election.
That prompted the party to start a new phase of development by focusing on local government and growing frustration over a very large increase in asylum seekers.
Its first high-profile local win came in June when an AfD candidate was elected county manager in the Sonneberg district in the eastern state of Thuringia. A month later, an AfD candidate secured the mayorship in a small town in neighbouring Saxony-Anhalt.
The latest victory came just days after Saxony’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a state intelligence agency, declared the local AfD an extremist organisation.
Pirna is one of the largest cities in the so-called Saxony Switzerland region near the Czech border.
Saxony’s opposition Green Party leader Marie Müser said blame for the result should be shared between political rivals -but also the low turnout of 53 per cent.
“This shows that democratic parties, including ourselves, do not reach enough people at the moment,” she said.
Sunday’s election result was described as a “bitter signal” by the International Auschwitz Committee.
“For this election, all non-voters who have given up on democracy carry responsibility for this result,” said Christoph Heubner, the committee’s executive vice-president.
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