At the head of the NRW-FDP, Joachim Stamp draws the conclusion from the poor performance in the state elections: He will no longer run for state chairman, he has now announced.

Düsseldorf (dpa / lnw) – The FDP state chairman Joachim Stamp resigns after the debacle of the Liberals in the state elections. A party spokesman said on Thursday in Düsseldorf that Stamp would not stand for re-election in the new state executive elections next January. The Bonn “General-anzeiger” had previously reported. Stamp is thus drawing the conclusion from his party’s heavy defeat 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 state elections in which his party halved its result to 5.9 percent in May (2017: 12.6 percent). The black-yellow coalition could not continue to govern.

Stamp himself lost his offices as integration and family minister and as deputy prime minister. He had already announced in June that the NRW-FDP would be reorganized at an early party conference. At the time, however, it remained unclear what role he himself would play.

In an email to the members of the NRW-FDP, Stamp announced his withdrawal. He justified the fact that this had not happened earlier by saying that he felt responsible for ensuring an orderly new start.

“Immediately after the state elections, we also started a comprehensive structural process in the state executive board, in which we work through our deficits in all areas,” says the mail, which is available to the dpa.

Until the new election of the state board, he wants to “continue to shape” the reform process together with Secretary General Moritz Körner. Five years earlier, the FDP had won 12.6 percent of the votes with the then state chairman and top candidate Christian Lindner. In the previous election period, there were 28 Liberals in the Dusseldorf Parliament. Since May there are only twelve.