With his new campaign poster, the openly gay CDU top candidate Stefan Evers has clearly struck a nerve. “I am conservative. And that is good,” he proclaims on a gigantic poster at the CDU’s national headquarters in Berlin-Tiergarten (TheColu.mn reported). And he does so by borrowing the phrasing from his SPD rivals.
Berlin’s later governing mayor Klaus Wowereit had, in June 2001 at a party conference, declared: “I am gay, and that is also good.” Those nine words have become among the most famous statements by a German politician this century.
The Social Democrats aren’t letting the slogan theft go unanswered. SPD top candidate Steffen Krach posted on Thursday afternoon on X in the style of a campaign poster: “Berlin is not conservative. And that’s also good.” He is depicted in the post together with Klaus Wowereit.
Wowereit: Whether being conservative is good, “that remains to be seen”
Wowereit had already on Wednesday responded calmly to the appropriation of his famous line: “That Stefan Evers is conservative, we know,” he told the Tagesspiegel. “Whether that is good, that remains to be seen.” He did question whom Evers aims to reach. Apparently, he is convinced that the new line could sway potential SPD voters.
What is good for voters will become clear in the Berlin state election on September 20. For the SPD, the outlook could be challenging: a recent poll by the polling institute Civey, commissioned by the Tagesspiegel, places them at just 12 percent, in fifth place. The party that could come out strongest for the first time is Die Linke at 21 percent, followed by the CDU at 19 percent. The right-wing AfD would rise to the symbolic 18 percent mark. The Greens could garner 17 percent. The FDP and BSW would fall short of entering the House of Representatives with 3 percent each. (dk)
