The Greens in Baden-Württemberg are currently engaged in heated discussions about the list for the 2025 federal election. There is a threat of contested candidacies from representatives of the left and the realpolitik wing. In 2021, the realists Franziska Brantner and Cem Özdemir ran for first and second place. The realist camp now fears that co-federal chairwoman Ricarda Lang could be interested in first place as the top candidate in order to stabilize her weakened position at the top of the party. In 2021, she was in ninth place.
From the point of view of the strategists around Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann, a top candidate for Baden-Württemberg, Lang, would also be a devastating signal for the state elections, which will take place a few months after the federal election in early 2026. It is almost certain that Federal Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir, who was directly elected for the Stuttgart I constituency, will announce his candidacy as Kretschmann’s successor in September or October.
Some left-wingers want to put Lang first on the list and move the Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Economics, Franziska Brantner, to second place. Brantner has already publicly announced that she will run for first place again in December. If the Left puts her in second place, the realists threaten to displace the recognized left-wing Bundestag members Agnieszka Brugger (third place) and Marcel Emmerich (sixth place).
Some MPs are no longer running
The realists expect that the left wing will not complicate the start of a difficult state election campaign with Özdemir. In the 2021 federal election, the party received 17.2 percent of the second votes in Baden-Württemberg and won four direct mandates. After the electoral reform and in view of worsening polls, the Southwest Greens can probably only count on ten safe list candidates. Some MPs are no longer running: Christian Kühn has already left the Bundestag after moving to the presidency of the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management.
It is unclear who could run in the Stuttgart Bundestag constituency instead of Özdemir. For some time there had been speculation that the Green State Parliament President Muhterem Aras would move to the Bundestag, because Özdemir could apply for a seat in the state parliament in the Stuttgart I constituency if he wants to be the top candidate. It is unclear whether Harald Ebner and Beate Müller-Gemmeke will apply again. Melis Sekmen’s place on the list in Mannheim has already become vacant due to her switch to the CDU. There is also a new situation in the Green stronghold of Tübingen: the left-wing Kühn is no longer running, and Martin Rosemann and Annette Widmann-Mauz are also leaving politics in the SPD and CDU and will not be running again.
