Winner of the runoff election: Berlin’s State Secretary Krach wins election in Hanover – Berlin
Berlin’s current Secretary of State for Science has probably won the runoff election for regional president in Hanover. Steffen Krach quickly received 65 percent of the vote. The SPD politician is thus well ahead of CDU opponent Christine Karasch, who came to about 35 percent.
From the local elections two weeks ago, Krach and Karasch emerged as the strongest candidates for the region around Lower Saxony’s state capital. Since none of the eight candidates got more than half of the votes at the time, Krach and Karasch expected in the runoff election. Most recently, the certain Greens had called for this time to vote for SPD man Krach and thus against CDU candidate Karasch.
Now social democrat Krach is likely to be the successor to his party colleague Hauke Jagau, who no longer ran for the local elections in Lower Saxony. Almost 1.2 million people live in the 21 municipalities in the Hanover region. The president of the regional administration is politically responsible for 3300 employees of the local administration. Tasks are the local transport, the municipal hospitals, the garbage disposal, the vocational and special schools as well as the environmental and nature conservation authorities.
Krach decided a year ago to run in Hanover. During the war in Berlin, he was particularly noticeable because of his work for the Charité. He had argued several times with the coalition partners of the Greens about the work at Europe’s largest university clinic. This summer Krach was mainly active in Hanover.
In Berlin, the science administration was relocated to the Senate Chancellery in 2016, Senator for Science (also Krach’s superior) is still head of government Michael Müller (SPD). Should the social democratic top candidate Franziska Giffey conquer the Red City Hall, she should assign science and research to a different Senate administration – the background is her doctorate, which was revoked by the Free University. It is unclear to which Senate administration the department will be affiliated after the election of the House of Representatives.