The website is still around. “For me, it’s going to be a change of direction”, is available on the Homepage of Andreas Ritzenhoff, who had created the entrepreneur extra for his candidacy for the CDU presidency. And: “Thank you for your support.”
Falk Heunemann
business editor of the Rhein-Main-Zeitung and the business magazine Metropolitan.
F. A. Z.
it has little. The Marburg businessman, had joined barely a year ago, the party, the company is in Marburg, annually, 80 million euros turnover and 800 people are employed, was challenged as the first, the eternal, the CDU-Chairman Angela Merkel. The chances of the outsider on votes of many Disaffected stood there not so bad. “We need more people in politics, the experience from other areas of life bring,” he today, a few days after the decisive Federal party, in an interview with this newspaper sure.
Not on the ballot
however, the party lost the state election in Hesse, the Federal Chairman announced their withdrawal, and three significantly more prominent candidates expressed an interest in the office that has a good chance to be in a couple of years ago, the German Chancellor. The Congress elected in the second ballot the General Secretary to the new Chairman. Ritzenhoff was not on the ballot, not even in the first ballot.
he had used days earlier Confidence: He had found a party Congress delegate who would nominate, he told a week before the party. It is conceivable, seemed to be, finally, the entrepreneurs had travelled extra to the eight regional conferences, had distributed his application documents, and trying to get the delegates into the conversation. 5000 leaflets he had distributed, he says. This effort had operated only three of the temporarily 14 applicant: Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Jens Spahn, and Friedrich Merz. “The party base was very open and affirmative,” he says.
No appearance at the Base
He is advertising for content and not for yourself as a Person, said entrepreneurs Ritzenhoff everyone, should listen. More Europe, less Refugee immigration, more environmental protection, less radio holes, support for small businesses, modern schools. And, very important: the defense of Chinese investors: “We must prevent our businesses, our housing and our land will continue to be taken so unrestrained by Chinese government capital,” he said in an interview with this newspaper.
But unlike the party to prominence, he was at none of the regional conferences, to the stage and questions from the members. The party leadership had determined that on the basis of meeting only should occur, who have the support of a circle of Association. Self-Ritzenhoffs home Association Marburg-Biedenkopf, was not ready for it. To him, the Country’s Finance Minister, Thomas Schäfer, dear, Merz or Spahn had seen at the party top, as he writes on his Facebook page. “I can’t understand why the party leadership has the wider discussion is not allowed,” says Ritzenhoff today. Many members of the party base would have perceived the regulations as undemocratic.
“My application came out of the blue”
the party conference in Hamburg, finally, began, not a single one of the 1001 delegates to Ritzenhoff. “You were concerned, to have personal disadvantages, if you propose to me,” the entrepreneur, in the meantime, sure.
