A candidate for Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was elected on Sunday as the mayor of the eastern town of Pirna, marking another milestone for the party, The Associated Press reported.
Official results showed that Tim Lochner — who isn’t a member of AfD but ran on its ticket — won 38.5% of the vote in a three-way runoff. Candidates for the center-right Christian Democratic Union, Germany’s main opposition party, and the conservative Free Voters took 31.4% and 30.1%, respectively.
Lochner’s win in Pirna marks the first time that an AfD candidate has been elected as an “Oberbuergermeister,” the mayor of a significantly sized town or city.
AfD’s first mayor anywhere in Germany was elected in August in the municipality of Raguhn-Jessnitz, in the neighboring eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.
In June, AfD won a local election for the first time, when Robert Sesselmann, a lawyer and regional lawmaker, won the election for district administrator in Sonneberg in the central state of Thuringia.
A month later, the party notched up another first when its candidate was elected a full-time mayor of the small town of Raguhn-Jessnitz, in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.
AfD, which was formed in 2013, entered Germany’s national parliament with 12.6% of the vote in 2017. The party has a history of controversial statements, particularly surrounding the Holocaust. Hoecke caused a firestorm in February of 2017 when he suggested that Germany should end its decades-long tradition of acknowledging and atoning for its Nazi past.
AfD chairman Alexander Gauland in 2018 described the Nazi period as a mere "speck of bird poo in over 1,000 years of successful German history".
He had previously asserted, however, that Jews should not fear the strong election showing by AfD and indicated that he was ready to meet with German Jewish leaders “at any time.”