First candidate withdraws her candidacy for FDP chairmanship

It was less than three weeks ago that the head of Hamburg's stock exchange supervisory authority, Beate Schlueter, announced her candidacy for the chairmanship of the FDP in the Hanseatic city. She wanted to make the Elbe Liberals, who failed at the five percent hurdle in the last state elections, "more visible again," she explained. The 60-year-old surprisingly withdrew her candidacy on Tuesday.

According to WELT information, Schlueter announced her withdrawal in the morning in an email to the state board. She cited unforeseeable developments in her environment as the reason for this. She sees herself "forced with great regret" to no longer run for the state presidency. She is also not available for other positions in the newly elected state board.

On April 1, the Hamburg FDP elects a new state board as scheduled. The previous state chairman Michael Kruse had declared at the end of February that he would not be available for another term. The 39-year-old justified this with the time required for his Bundestag mandate.

In addition to Beate Schlueter, who is associated within the party with the circle of parliamentarians and former FDP top candidate Anna von Treuenfels-Frowein, there is only one other candidate. Sonja Jacobsen is currently deputy state chairman and is considered a close confidant of the outgoing state chairman Kruse.

Last week, the candidates for the state chairmanship and the party members who want to run for other posts such as deputy state chairmanship presented themselves to around 100 interested parties in a hearing. Schlueter, who is less well known in the party than Jacobsen, was able to convince there, according to the participants.

The party conference will show whether there are other candidates for the state presidency. Recently, the party had hit the headlines mainly due to internal disputes. It was only on March 7 that the outgoing state chairman Kruse and four young liberals from the JuLis settled a conflict that had lasted for around a year.

The dispute was sparked in spring 2022 by Kruse's announcement that he wanted to sue the Hamburg hotspot rule to contain the corona pandemic. The former JuLi boss Carl Cevin-Key Coste then described the project as a "PR campaign and unworthy of a constitutional party". The state board put forward a party exclusion procedure and the dispute escalated.

At a conciliation meeting on the advice of the party's arbitration board, a compromise was finally found in early March. Among other things, both groups no longer want to accuse each other of "party-damaging behavior".