Mike Josef won the runoff for mayor. Frankfurt will thus continue to be governed by a Social Democrat.
Mike Josef (SPD) wins the runoff with 51.7 percent. CDU candidate Uwe Becker came to 48.3 percent. Josef will therefore be the new mayor of Frankfurt and successor to ex-scandal mayor Peter Feldmann. After Becker was just ahead at the beginning, Josef overtook him, whose lead has grown continuously since then.
According to a local reporter, when Josef arrived at the Römer town hall together with his wife, he was greeted with thunderous applause.
“I still have to realize that,” said the election winner to t-online. The first thing he did was call his parents. In the direction of his friends and party colleagues, Josef said: “Without you, I wouldn’t have made it.” Previously, the new mayor said in the “Hessenschau” that he was overwhelmed. He feels grateful to everyone “who supported me and all voters”. With tears in his eyes, he continued: “I want to become mayor of all Frankfurt and build bridges. I would like to thank Uwe Becker for a fair election campaign.”
About an hour before Joseph, the defeated Becker came into the Römer. There he was greeted with applause by his party friends. Prime Minister Boris Rhein was also there. “I think a result of 48 percent can be accepted with one’s head held high in a big city like Frankfurt. I would have liked a different result. Now I wish Mike Josef every success,” said Becker to t-online.
Nancy Faeser (SPD), Federal Minister of the Interior and the SPD’s top candidate for the state elections, also took the opportunity to personally congratulate Josef in the Römer. “The great result is his credit. He just did a very good job as a department head and the voters thanked him for it,” she told t-online.
In the first ballot, 40-year-old Josef was in second place with 24 percent, ten percentage points behind Becker. Voter turnout was 35.4 percent.
Several defeated candidates supported Joseph
Before the election, it was clear that the votes of Green supporters would be decisive. The Green Party candidate, Manuel Rottmann, came in third with 21.3 percent in the first round of voting. A few days ago, the leadership of the parliamentary group called for Mike Josefs to be elected. The party chairmen did not make any recommendations for the election, but they spoke clearly in the direction of one of the two candidates. “Particular attention is paid to the mobility department and the great concern that a future mayor who is not part of the coalition could block the planned projects here.”
Clearer words came from several of the defeated candidates. “Bahnbabo” Peter Wirth, who came fourth in the first ballot, advertised for the SPD candidate on Twitter. In Römer he said to t-online: “Mike Josef sets a very important sign in this city, namely that you can do it, he wasn’t a bed of roses as a child, and now he’s mayor.”
