After the election of AfD candidate in Pirna: Independent voters criticize CDU
Lochner is the first AfD candidate to become Lord Mayor in Germany. According to preliminary results, he won the second round of voting on Sunday with 38.54% of the vote against the candidate of the Free Voters, Ralf Thiele, and CDU candidate Kathrin Dollinger-Knuth. Pirna, located south-east of Dresden in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, has 40,000 inhabitants.
Lochner won the first round of voting on November 26, ahead of second-placed Thiele and third-placed Dollinger-Knuth. Candidates from the Left, SPD and Greens who had also entered the race subsequently decided not to run again in the second round in favor of the CDU candidate.
"It was clear that a third candidate in the second round would play into the hands of the AfD," Weidinger criticized the Christian Democrats. "However, the CDU's drive to retain power was probably too great to back down in favor of a bourgeois candidate like Ralf Thiele.
With Lochner's election, the AfD now holds two top municipal posts in Germany. In June, AfD politician Robert Sesselmann won a district council post for the party for the first time in the Thuringian district of Sonneberg.
Last week, the Saxon State Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the AfD in the Free State as definitely right-wing extremist. After Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, the Saxon AfD is already the third state association of the party with such a classification. A new state parliament will be elected in Saxony on September 1 next year.
Lochner is a member of the AfD parliamentary group in Pirna town council, but is not a party member himself. He runs a carpentry business. Lochner already stood in the 2017 mayoral election, but was clearly defeated by the previous incumbent Klaus-Peter Hanke (non-party), who did not stand again in the current election for reasons of age.
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Source: www.stern.de
