Tim Lochner is the first AfD candidate to win a mayoral election in Germany. The 53-year-old prevailed in the second round of voting on Sunday in Pirna, Saxony, against two opponents from the CDU and the Free Voters, as the city announced on its website in the evening.
Lochner is independent, but ran for the AfD. According to the preliminary final result, he received around 38.5 percent of the votes. Behind them are Kathrin Dollinger-Knuth (CDU) with around 31.4 percent and the independent Ralf Thiele, who entered the race for the Free Voters, with around 30.1 percent. Lochner and Thiele were also former CDU members. The city administration reported voter turnout at 53.8 percent. In the first round of voting it was comparatively weak at 50.4 percent.
Lochner – a carpenter and restorer by profession – had already dominated the first round of voting on November 26th in the city, which has around 40,000 inhabitants. At that time he received almost 33 percent of the vote and was ahead of Thiele (23.2 percent) and Dollinger-Knuth (20.3). The independent candidate André Liebscher (13.7) and Ralf Wätzig (SPD, supported by the Greens/almost 10 percent) did not run in the second round and supported the CDU candidate Dollinger-Knuth.
Before Pirna, AfD candidates had already won two important local political offices in Germany. In June, the AfD won a district election for the first time – with Robert Sesselmann in the Sonneberg district in Thuringia. In August of this year, Hannes Loth was elected as the country’s first mayor of a German municipality – in Raguhn-Jeßnitz (Saxony-Anhalt).
