Overview
- The CDU district chairs proposed Finance and Culture Senator Stefan Evers to replace Kai Wegner as the party’s Spitzenkandidat and the CDU state executive is expected to formally nominate him on Monday.
- Wegner announced his withdrawal from the lead candidacy on Friday after sustained criticism over his handling of January’s large power outage, and he will remain mayor until a successor is chosen.
- Evers has outlined a clear fiscal-consolidation agenda that would roll back 'free' benefits for well‑off families, including ending free school lunches for households that can afford them.
- To tackle visible disorder Evers proposes that able recipients of state benefits do cleaning work for the city, together with tougher fines and stepped-up enforcement, and he calls for a joint crisis centre and measures to keep critical IT systems running during outages.
- Evers’s public defense of a Senate presence at Christopher Street Day, his framing as a ‘modern conservatism’ and his pledge to prevent a left‑green government shift position the CDU on cultural and security themes while the party faces low poll numbers and little time for a campaign turnaround.