Candidate for chancellor: The CSU is struggling with Friedrich Merz

Handelsblatt Candidate for chancellor: The CSU is struggling with Friedrich Merz Delhaes, Daniel • 21 hours • 3 minutes reading time CDU leader Friedrich Merz (l.) and CSU leader Markus Söder: Together they want success. Who will let whom go first? Where will CSU leader Markus Söder and the CDU chairman clarify who will lead the Union into the race as candidate for chancellor? A visit to Lake Tegernsee has sparked speculation. Friedrich Merz likes to be in Bavaria and often goes there. 50 kilometers south of Munich, on Lake Tegernsee, the CDU leader has been regularly relaxing in his family home for many years. Here, at the foot of the Alpine foothills, “paradise” is knocking on the door, as CSU leader Markus Söder likes to describe his Free State: cool mountain water rushes down into the lake, half-timbered houses stop time, bakers and butchers live German craftsmanship. Merz from Sauerland has already celebrated his big birthday in this setting, inviting his friends to the house on Lake Tegernsee. Söder has never been there. This raises the question: Wouldn't this be the perfect place for the party leaders to talk about the best way back to power in the federal government? Then to unanimously announce who should lead the Union as candidate for chancellor: the Bavarian or the Bavarian by choice? When asked, the CSU does not want to know anything about the K issue, but is itself provoking speculation. Because just in time for the parliamentary summer recess, Söder's general secretary Martin Huber invited media representatives to the six-kilometer-long and two-kilometer-wide lake, just a few days before Merz and Söder vied for the voters' favor on Sunday. The event did little to clarify the question of chancellor - but it did give rise to speculation. Agreement like in Wolfratshausen? For months, Merz and Söder have been keeping secret how and where they will settle the K question. One thing is certain: the two want to decide after the three state elections in East Germany, i.e. after September 22nd - alone, not in a committee or with the state leaders of their parties. Will it perhaps go like it did in 2002? Back then, Angela Merkel and Edmund Stoiber met for breakfast in his hometown of Wolfratshausen, not far from Lake Tegernsee. Merkel left the candidacy to Stoiber. In the summer interview - "nonsense analysis!" ZDF wants to expose Söder's voting strategy - he counters dryly The CSU officially says that it does not know the location or the exact address of the CDU leader's holiday home. In Gmund on the east bank of Lake Tegernsee, however, there is a clue. On a house wall there is a fake exit sign with "Citizen's Allowance" crossed out in red and "Work" below pointing the way ahead. Merz could hardly come up with a better poster for the federal election campaign. The former mayor of the municipality, from the CSU, had already revealed in 2018 that Merz resides in Gmund. Merz ran as a candidate for the CDU party chairmanship. If Merz were to become chancellor, the local politician rejoiced: "Then Gmund would be the only municipality in Germany that would have two chancellors as fellow citizens in its history books." They have already erected a monument to Ludwig Erhard in Gmund and named a square after him. Merz is actually leading the CDU - after three attempts. An arduous climb like up to the Wallberg, at the other end of Lake Tegernsee. It is a steep 1600 meter climb, with more or less solid ground. But once you get to the top, the alpine meadow is blooming colorfully, cows are grazing comfortably, and on clear days the view stretches across the lake to Munich. There, where Markus Söder reigns. A hidden object picture with lots of Söders Of course, CDU leader Merz is "the favorite," the Prime Minister said with regard to the candidacy for chancellor. He himself sees his place in Bavaria. Here he is omnipresent, just like in the large hidden object picture in the boardroom of the CSU state leadership. It shows Bavaria and in it many Söders: on bicycles, cheered on in market squares, eating bratwurst, overlooking everything in a hot air balloon. "Bavaria - our country in good hands," is written above it. And yet: There may be circumstances for the CSU leader in which "it has to be and one is forced" to leave paradise. One such circumstance is "that Friedrich Merz asks me," Söder said recently. Perhaps at Tegernsee? Merz treated himself to a break last week - in France, it was said. If he had been at Tegernsee, he would have read in the local newspaper that his popularity ratings were improving slightly, while the traffic light coalition in Berlin was still arguing. In the polls, however, the Union is still only at 30 percent and Söder is ahead of Merz. This circumstance should help the CSU leader to drive up the price for his sacrifice: more social policy for the election program, no reform of the debt brake. Söder knows that after the election he will have to give in to pressure from the other CDU state premiers. They all want to be allowed to take on more debt in order to be able to invest.