Berlins CDU chief Wegner withdraws top candidate bid amid blackout fallout

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Berlins CDU chief Wegner withdraws top candidate bid amid blackout fallout
Berlins mayor Wegner apologises after court confirms he misled public on power outage
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Berlin’s Regierender Bürgermeister Kai Wegner announced on Friday that he will not stand as the CDU’s top candidate in the 25 September Abgeordnetenhauswahl, bowing to mounting pressure over his handling of the 3 January blackout and repeated false statements about his actions that day.
Speaking at a hastily convened press conference in Charlottenburg, Wegner said he was taking responsibility for “communicative errors” that had overshadowed his campaign and prevented him from reaching voters. “Yes, I made mistakes in communication—it was rubbish,” he told reporters. “I’m angriest with myself about it.” He added that he would remain in office until a new coalition is formed but would not serve in the next Senate.
The immediate trigger was a draft open letter circulated among CDU members on Friday morning demanding his withdrawal. Party insiders said the letter, initiated by figures including Junge Union leader Harald Burkart, had crystallised the discontent that had built since January, when Wegner was found to have played tennis during the outage and later misrepresented his crisis-management calls. Public broadcaster rbb reported that records from the Senate Chancellery showed he had not made any official calls before midday on 3 January, contradicting his earlier claims.
Wegner’s decision caps a precipitous fall in CDU polling: in the 1 July Infratest dimap survey the party stood at 17 %, behind Die Linke (20 %), the Greens (19 %) and the AfD (18 %). The CDU had already slipped to fourth place in the most recent polls, a reversal of fortune for a party that governed Berlin in a grand coalition with the SPD until 2023.
The party’s Berlin executive and the twelve Kreisvorsitzenden are scheduled to meet this evening to decide on a successor and chart the campaign’s next steps. Finance Senator Stefan Evers is widely tipped to take the top spot; Wegner said he had worked closely with Evers for years but insisted the choice belonged to the Landesvorstand. Wegner also announced he would step down as CDU Berlin Landesvorsitzender “at the earliest possible moment,” though he did not set a date, saying only, “The decisive question is: when is the right moment?”
In a parting shot at the left, Wegner framed his withdrawal as a move to prevent a left-wing coalition after the vote. “We must ensure that Berlin remains on a course of the centre,” he said. “My goal was always to be authentic, and I have failed to get through to people.” He insisted his crisis management had been sound but conceded that the communication failures had undermined his credibility.
The CDU’s crisis meeting comes against a backdrop of broader unease in the party. Several grassroots members had publicly urged Wegner to step aside, and the pressure intensified after the Tagesspiegel reported on Tuesday that Senate records contradicted his account of telephone coordination during the blackout. The episode, quickly dubbed “Tennisgate,” has dominated Berlin politics for months and contributed to the CDU’s slide in the polls.
Wegner’s tenure as Regierender Bürgermeister began in April 2023 in a black-red coalition with the SPD. His decision to withdraw from the ballot leaves the CDU scrambling to regain momentum less than ten weeks before polling day, with the capital’s political future hanging in the balance.
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