Berlin’s mayor abandons reelection campaign after ‘tennis-gate’ outcry

Kai Wegner admits poor communication in handling of power blackout overshadowed his other political work

Berlin’s embattled mayor has abandoned his campaign to stand for reelection after failing to recover from a row over his decision to play tennis while large parts of the German capital were hit by a power blackout in January.

Kai Wegner announced on Friday afternoon that he would not run in Berlin’s 20 September election after coming under huge pressure to step down from his party, the Christian Democrats (CDU). Some members wrote an open letter to Wegner this week in which they appealed to him to withdraw his candidacy.

“The communication was rubbish … and believe me, I am more annoyed about this than anyone else,” Wegner said, referring to the power outage triggered by an arson attack which plunged about 45,000 homes and more than 2,000 businesses into darkness for nearly a week in January during a very cold spell. Wegner said the drop in trust in him meant he was no longer able to communicate the essence of his politics to the electorate.

“I can no longer get my message out because another debate is overshadowing everything else,” said Wegner. He insisted that, while he had made errors in terms of his communication, his management of the emergency had been good. He said he had always sought to remain authentic.

The fallout had caused the CDU’s standing to suffer, he admitted. By resigning, he would ensure “that the CDU is not further weakened over the coming days and weeks through debates about its personnel,” he said.

Polls indicate that the coalition between the CDU and the Social Democrats (SPD) is unlikely to secure anything near the majority it would need to continue in power after the September vote. Wegner told reporters in January that he had been working round the clock to mitigate the impact of the blackout, the longest since the second world war.

“I was neither bored nor putting my feet up, but was on the phone all day trying to coordinate and get as much information as possible,” he said, adding that he had “literally locked myself in my office at home”.

He was soon forced to confirm a report by the public broadcaster RBB that he had gone to play tennis for an hour with his partner, the Berlin education minister, Katharina Günther-Wünsch, just hours after the onset of the blackout.

Later, he admitted his choice of words had been wrong. “Looking back, I should have said on Sunday what I did on Saturday,” he said. “Yes, at some point I said: ‘I need a short break, I need to clear my head’ and the best way for me to do that is with sport.”

The outcry around the incident was considerable. Since January, he has faced growing pressure to resign amid a broad consensus that he had lost the authority to stay in office owing to what has become known as “tennis-gate”.

In the most recent poll, the CDU had fallen to fourth place, behind the far-left Die Linke, the Greens and the far-right populist AfD. Released on 1 July, the poll showed Die Linke in the lead on 20%, with the CDU on 17%, trailed only by the SPD on just 13%.

Wegner is expected to be replaced by Stefan Evers, Berlin’s finance senator, who since April, has also held the role of culture senator.