On the very same day that incumbent party leader Joachim Stamp announced his retirement, he threw his hat in the ring: 35-year-old Henning Höne from Münsterland wants to become the new strongman of the NRW Liberals.
Dusseldorf (dpa / lnw) – The Munsterlander Henning Höne (35) wants to be the new head of the FDP in North Rhine-Westphalia. “I announced to the state board that I would apply for the state chairmanship,” said Höne in Düsseldorf on Friday. “I want to contribute to the resurgence, to the reconstruction of the Free Democrats here in North Rhine-Westphalia,” he said.
On Thursday, the incumbent state chairman, Joachim Stamp, informed the 20,000 or so FDP members in the state by email that he would not stand for re-election in the state executive committee elections next January.
After the lost state elections, in which the FDP had lost government participation, Höne was elected chairman of the only twelve-member FDP state parliamentary group. He is an industrial clerk and studied business administration, is married and has had a son since last year. Höne was state chairman of the Young Liberals from 2010 to 2013. He has been a member of the state parliament for ten years.
The Free Democrats would have to be “political pioneers” again, would have to “earn opinion leadership,” said Höne. He accused the black-green state government: “As long as I can look back politically, there was no state government that was so loudly silent, a whole summer break after taking office.”
Stamp, who succeeded Christian Lindner as state party leader, had drawn the necessary conclusions from the heavy defeat of the Liberals in the state elections on May 15. The 52-year-old has been state chairman of the NRW-FDP since 2017 and was the top candidate for the election in which the FDP halved its result to 5.9 percent.
Five years earlier, the FDP had won 12.6 percent of the votes with the then state chairman and top candidate Lindner. In the previous election period, there were 28 Liberals as members of the Dusseldorf Parliament. Since May there are only 12. The black-yellow coalition could not continue to govern.
Höne rejected the criticism from NRW Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) of the federal government from the SPD, Greens and FDP: “I think we are basically on the right track in Berlin.” The handwriting of the Liberals in the governing coalition is clearly recognizable.
The new state board of the North Rhine-Westphalia Liberals is to be elected by a party conference next January. Should Höne be elected the new state leader by the delegates, he would not be the youngest state leader of the Liberals: Christian Lindner was 33 years old when he was elected to office in 2012.
