Martin Hikel and Nicola Böcker-Giannini set to head Berlin SPD party.
Ultimately, the preferred picks win: The Berlin SPD has a new leadership team. District Mayor of Neukölln and ex-state secretary are set to revamp the state association. Nonetheless, a party conference has the last word.
Voters of the Berlin SPD have chosen Neukölln's district mayor Martin Hikel and former state secretary Nicola Böcker-Giannini to lead the party. This was revealed after the vote tally by current SPD state chairwoman Franziska Giffey. The competing pair of SPD state vice-chair Kian Niroomand and former co-chair of the Berlin SPD Women's Party, Jana Bertels, received 41.55% of the votes in the run-off election for the future leadership duo.
The roughly 18,000 Berlin Social Democrats were given the chance to vote for the state leadership in two rounds via a members' survey. The pairing of Raed Saleh, who was originally running alongside Giffey as state chairman and with a district politician, was eliminated in the first round. Saleh is also the chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in the state assembly. Giffey, meanwhile, opted not to contest again. The present victors secured around 48% of the votes in the first round but missed the declared absolute majority of 50%.
Hikel has been the mayor of Neukölln since 2018 while Böcker-Giannini was a House of Representatives for the SPD until 2021. She was State Secretary for Sport from 2021 to 2023 before being dismissed by Interior and Sports Senator Iris Spranger. The SPD has been in a coalition government with the CDU in Berlin for over a year. However, Hikel and Böcker-Giannini have yet to be officially elected. This is set to occur at the state party conference on May 25. The results from the members' survey are not legally binding. Nonetheless, it is likely that the delegates will adhere to them.
The outcome of the members' poll deals a blow to Saleh. The 46-year-old is a key player in the Berlin Social Democrats. He first ran for the state chairmanship in 2014 - and failed. It wasn't until six years later, teaming up with Giffey, that he managed to achieve his goal. He has served as the head of the parliamentary group since 2011. Throughout this time, he has secured parliamentary majorities for three SPD mayors.
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Source: www.ntv.de
