With reports of its triumph garnering significant attention from media outlets, from The New York Times to Al Jazeera, the young Alternative for Germany (AfD) populist party (10 years) won its first-ever race for Landrat — the equivalent of head of the county council — on Sunday.
With the near-final results in, local attorney Robert Sesselmann rolled up 53% of the votes in the race to lead the government in Sonneberg, a Kreis (district) in Thuringia, central Germany.
Sesselmann’s AfD began as a Eurosceptic Party in 2013, but saw its performance jump after securing representation in 14 of Germany’s 16 state parliaments as well as in the Bundestag (national Parliament) when it began to take a hard line against illegal immigration. More recently, the populist party has begun to voice its skepticism regarding Germany's support of Ukraine in its war with Russia.
The AfD is the third-largest party in the Bundestag with 78 seats, compared to 197 for the CDU-CSU (Conservative) Party and 416 for the ruling coalition — the SPD (Socialists) with 206, the Greens with 118, and Free Democrats (Libertarian) with 92.
The respected Forsa poll showed in June that if national elections were held now, the CDU-CSU would lead with 27%, followed by the AfD at 19%, and the SPD of Chancellor Otto Scholz at 18%.
Regarding the AfD’s Sunday victory in Sonneberg, the Financial Times reported that "voters faced with inflation, recession, and an uptick in refugee numbers are increasingly turning away from mainstream parties, or turning their backs on Germany’s democratic system altogether."
Martin Klingst, bestselling author and longtime political correspondent for Die Ziet, told Newsmax that the AfD’s success in recent elections has had an impact on national policy.
"In Brussels, the German government, led by the center-left Ampelkoalition ["traffic-light coalition"] of the SPD, Greens, and Free Democrats, agreed to an asylum compromise that entails significant restrictions on the rights of refugees," Klingst said. "You can find that good or bad — and there are arguments for and against it — but in migration policy, Germany has clearly steered a much more restrictive and conservative course in recent years."
He also pointed out that "all authoritative politicians from the CDU and CSU swear that there is no cooperation between them and the AfD. For the time being, a coalition at the state level or even at the federal level is completely out of the question."
Other observers have a different view of the controversial party. Morgan Murphy, former national security adviser to Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said that what strikes her most about the AfD "is how the German government is already mobilized against it, in much the same way the FBI and CIA colluded to thwart the Republicans. They should have learned from us that such tactics turn voters into skeptics."
Of the 48,621 eligible voters in the Sonneberg district in the eastern state of Thuringia, 14,992 voted for the AfD. Whether its success continues and is demonstrated on a larger scale will ultimately determine whether the new populist party is a force in Germany.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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