Working-class child, gay, from Upper Palatinate: This Green is set to become Berlin's Governing Mayor

You have to give the Greens credit: They're the first. By naming Werner Graf as their top candidate for next year's Berlin election, the party has outpaced all competitors.

The early decision could prove to be an invaluable advantage in the dispute between the Greens and the SPD for left-wing, bourgeois votes, and with the Left Party for more radical left-wing votes. Both parties must first resolve the leadership question – and there are no clear favorites among either the Reds or the Deep Reds. Especially within the SPD, everything points to a fight and a squabble rather than an amicable solution. Such a solution is otherwise only to be expected from the CDU and AfD. The nomination of Kai Wegner and Kristin Brinker for next year is a mere formality.

Berlin Greens: With their top candidacy they are getting ahead of the SPD and the Left

The fact that the Greens reached this amicable solution is by no means due to a newfound unity within this debate-loving party. The decision to appoint 45-year-old Werner Graf was made in backroom discussions. And it wasn't easy for everyone.

The mere fact that Graf is a man did not make him the party's natural sole top candidate. In fact, that's new. Until now, Daniel Wesener was the only male Green Party top candidate in Berlin – that was in 2016, when he ran on equal footing with three women. The party, which was completely divided at the time, had only been able to agree on a leadership quartet. More was not possible.

Things are different today, but Werner Graf, as the man at the forefront of this women's movement, can never be undisputed. Several women's committees met before he received the green light on Sunday. But after Bettina Jarasch hesitated, Lisa Paus withdrew after her mediocre performance as Federal Minister for Family Affairs, and Daniel Wesener also declined, the path was clear.

Like all Green Party meetings currently addressing the topic of top candidacy, these women's committees also met in secret. This left no room for grassroots democracy. The primary election demanded by the centrist Greens in the strong Mitte district association was rejected by the officials. Instead, the women took matters into their own hands.

Werner Graf will be able to live with this, as he saved himself a potentially painful result by using this backroom business. One like the one in August 2022, for example. The then party leader ran for election as one of the two parliamentary group leaders in the House of Representatives and received just 68 percent of the vote, unopposed, mind you. Graf had a more than respectable track record. During his tenure as co-state leader, top candidate Bettina Jarasch achieved the Berlin Greens' best result ever with 18.9 percent. Jarasch became deputy head of government, but Graf apparently made little use of it.

Werner Graf took it in good spirits and said: “There is no friction between us.” He viewed the result as “a sign of democracy,” as is always the case with his party.

Green candidate: Black-Red is a “coalition of regression”

Graf has put this lesson behind him. In the past two years, following the repeat election that resulted in the Greens' bitter expulsion from the Senate, he and Jarasch have held the parliamentary group together. This is, of course, easier when you're fighting a "coalition of regression," as the Greens have called the CDU/CSU and the SPD from day one, from the opposition benches. During this time, the balance of power among the top figures has also shifted: away from Jarasch and toward Graf.

At the same time, it was noticeable that the Greens almost always drafted motions and press releases jointly with the Left Party, which had also ended up in opposition. For the fundamentalists in particular, the Left Party remains the natural partner; among the realists, many see this as "coddling up to death." This must change if the Greens want to have a chance next year against the Left Party, which has been riding an unexpected wave for months.

The Greens urgently need a profile of their own, not least after their failure at the federal level. Citizens' initiatives like "Berlin Car-Free," with their radicalism, aren't really helpful in this regard. One thing is certain, however: as an appendage of the activist tenants' and pro-Palestine Left Party, whose willingness or even ability to govern remains unclear, the Greens will be crushed.

Graf knows this too. But what does he want? And what can he achieve? Graf is a fundamentalist within the Green Party's canon, a left-winger in the traditionally left-wing Berlin state association. This makes him a more honest candidate than the realist Bettina Jarasch could ever be, who could never credibly convey that she wasn't a fake label. Graf embodies the essence of the party, which even gives critics hope for better times.

Now a new story is about to be told. Graf, a native of Upper Palatinate, whose dialect is still clearly audible even after decades in Berlin, wants to make "a progressive offer to the city." For him, a working-class child, a homosexual from the deep provinces, Berlin is a city of freedom, he says.

It's a sound that should make many things possible. As a fundamentalist, Graf, like most Greens, is first and foremost a Green-Red-Red man. At the same time, his good relationship with Kai Wegner is legendary – even though left-wing party colleagues have always tended to see Wegner as the source of this narrative. Nevertheless, Werner Graf doesn't categorically rule out a black-green coalition, if only to keep one more option open. And now the Left and the SPD must first put forward more candidates.