Berlin’s mayor abandons reelection campaign after ‘tennis-gate’ outcry | Germany

While large parts of Germany’s capital were affected by a power outage in January, Berlin’s embattled mayor abandoned his re-election campaign after failing to recover from a row over his decision to play tennis.

Kai Wegner announced on Friday afternoon that he will not participate in the September 20 elections in Berlin, after facing huge pressure to leave his party, the Christian Democrats (CDU). Some members wrote an open letter to Wegner this week, urging him to withdraw his candidacy.

“The communication was ridiculous… and believe me, I’m more pissed off about it than anyone else,” Wegner said, referring to a power outage triggered by an arson attack that plunged nearly 45,000 homes and more than 2,000 businesses into darkness for nearly a week during a bitterly cold spell in January. Wegner said declining confidence in him meant he could no longer convey the essence of his politics to voters.

“I can no longer deliver my message because another controversy overshadows everything,” Wegner said. He insisted that his emergency management was good, although he made mistakes in terms of communication. He said he always tries to stay original.

He admitted that this situation damaged the CDU’s standing. He said that by resigning he would ensure that “the CDU is not weakened further by controversies over its personnel in the coming days and weeks”.

Polls show that the coalition between the CDU and the Social Democrats (SPD) is unlikely to gain anywhere near the majority it will need to continue in power after the September elections. Wegner told reporters in January that he was working around the clock to mitigate the impact of the longest power outage since World War II.

“I wasn’t bored or putting my feet up, but I was on the phone all day trying to coordinate and get as much information as possible,” she said, adding that she “literally locked myself in my home office.”

He was soon forced to confirm public broadcaster RBB’s report that he had gone to play tennis for an hour with his partner, Berlin education minister Katharina Günther-Wünsch, just a few hours after the onset of the faint.

He later admitted that his choice of words was wrong. “Looking back, I should have said on Sunday what I did on Saturday,” he said. “Yes, at one point I said: ‘I need a short break, I need to clear my head,’ and the best way for me to do that is through exercise.”

The reactions to the incident were quite great. Since January, he has faced mounting pressure to resign, amid broad consensus that he has lost the ability to remain in office in what has come to be known as the “tennis gate”.

In the latest poll, the CDU fell to fourth place, behind the far-left Die Linke, the Greens and the far-right populist AfD. The poll, published on July 1, showed that Die Linke was ahead with 20% of the votes, the CDU was ahead with 17%, followed by the SPD with only 13% of the votes.

Wegner is expected to be replaced by Berlin finance senator Stefan Evers, who has also served as culture senator since April.