Lawmakers from the voted overwhelmingly in favor of running as the party’s lead candidate in February’s early federal election.
Habeck won 741 of 768 votes, or 96.48%, at the party’s hastily-arranged conference in Wiesbaden in western Germany on Sunday.
“With this speech I’m applying for permission to lead you in the election campaign,” the 55-year-old former children’s author told roughly 800 delegates before the vote.
Habeck said he knew he’d lost trust among the public in recent years in coalition, but that he wanted to take responsibility as the party’s “candidate for the people in Germany.”
‘A lot can change on all fronts,’ Habeck says of upcoming campaign
The nomination means Habeck is the party’s choice for chancellor should it be in a position to field one.
But Habeck and the Greens have been open about this being a distant prospect given that they are currently polling in the region of 11% or 12% support.
He did bring up the notion of getting all the way to the chancellery in Sunday’s speech to delegates, but stressed how this would only be possible if campaign momentum “carries us very far.”
that for this snap election in particular, he did hope current polls could prove misleading. All three members of the now-collapsed coalition had been suffering in the polls amid the public arguments, logjams, and compromises on policy as they tried to keep the fractious alliance together.
“All the disputes, all the compromises that we had to make are now gone. And now the parties are stepping forward with their own ideas. Now a lot can change on all fronts,” said Habeck.
Habeck steps in as Baerbock steps aside, in reversal of 2021
Four years ago, Habeck had stepped aside to allow Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock a shot. She said earlier this year that she wanted to focus on her current post, partly given the fragile geopolitical situation, and . Habeck then made his intentions clear a few days ago.
He explicitly thanked Baerbock when addressing delegates after her on Sunday.
“It’s a great privilege to know you’re ahead of me, by my side and behind me,” Habeck said to Baerbock.
Baerbock: No steadier hand in a storm
Baerbock, meanwhile, lauded Habeck as “super pragmatic,” saying he had managed to keep a steady course and free Germany from its dependence on Russian energy imports amid the crisis posed by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, referring to policies that in some cases angered parts of the party’s ecologist base.
“Nobody can handle the rudder like Robert Habeck in a storm and at the same time set the sails correctly in a tailwind,” Baerbock said.
Fresh faces Brantner and Branaszak take up party co-leadership
On Saturday, the opening day of the conference, the ecologist party also appointed a new party leadership duo: Multilingual foreign policy specialist Franziska Brantner and 35-year-old Felix Banaszak, a former co-chair of the party’s youth wing who only joined the federal parliament after the last elections in 2021.
The Greens briefly led in the polls early in the 2021 campaign, but slipped drastically to finish a distant third, on 14.7% support, as the Christian Democrats also struggled in the latter stages and the Social Democrats made a late surge.
msh/lo (AFP, dpa, Reuters)
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