German Greens launch chancellor bid as Merkel bloc squabbles
BERLIN (AP) — Germany's environmentalist Greens were set to announce Monday who will make the party's first run for the chancellery in September's national election, while a power struggle in Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right bloc entered its second week.
The Greens' smooth staging of the announcement of which of their co-leaders, Annalena Baerbock or Robert Habeck, will seek Germany's top job contrasts with the increasingly heated standoff in Merkel's Union bloc.
The Sept. 26 parliamentary election is unpredictable, in part because the incumbent isn't seeking re-election. Merkel vowed in 2018 not to seek a fifth four-year term, and no single obvious successor was ready to step up.
The governors of Germany's two most populous states, Armin Laschet and Markus Soeder, are battling for the center-right nomination to succeed her. They missed a self-imposed deadline to agree by Sunday.
Recent polls have shown the Greens running second behind the Union and ahead of Germany's traditional big center-left party, the Social Democrats.
Baerbock and Habeck have led the Greens since early 2018. A pragmatic and harmonious duo, they have presided over a rise in poll ratings. The Greens are in opposition nationally but sit in 11 of Germany’s 16 state governments.
Recent polls show support for the party of 20-22%, more than twice the 8.9% it won in the 2017 election.
Baerbock, 40, has been a lawmaker in the national parliament since 2013 but lacks government experience. Habeck, 51, served for several years as the agriculture and environment minister of the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein.
The choice of candidate will need endorsement from a party congress in June.
The Greens last month unveiled a program that proposes speeding up Germany’s exit from coal-fired power,...