(Bloomberg) -- A spokesman for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats denied a report that the party will hold an emergency meeting Tuesday to discuss if Scholz should be the party’s chancellor candidate.
The SPD deputy leaders will hold a regular conference call to organize the campaign ahead of the Feb. 23 snap election, party spokesman Dominik Dicken said via text message. “The report is false.”
Bild reported that the SPD leadership would hold an emergency meeting Tuesday to discuss who would be the party’s chancellor candidate.
Speculation has been growing that Scholz’s ambition for a second term could be derailed given his poor approval ratings. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who is regularly leading in popularity polls, is seen by many in the party as the better alternative to Scholz.
Former party leader Sigmar Gabriel on Tuesday openly questioned a second Scholz candidacy. There’s growing resistance against Scholz at the party base, Gabriel wrote on X. “What is now needed is brave political leadership,” he said.
Members of the SPD’s influential North Rhine-Westphalia group also distanced themselves from Scholz. “We are hearing a lot of support for Boris Pistorius,” SPD lawmakers Dirk Wiese and Wiebke Esdar, heads of the caucus group, said, according to the local newspaper Rheinische Post. “With a certain distance, Scholz’s work and his decisions for our country will surely be seen more positively.”
Party co-leaders Lars Klingbeil and Saskia Esken have so far voiced their support for Scholz, who hasn’t been officially nominated as his party’s candidate. Social Democrats are expected to pick a chancellor candidate at a party congress in January.
The SPD currently garners some 16% support in national polls and are in third place behind the Christian Democrats and the far-right Alternative for Germany. The Greens were at 10% in an INSA report published Saturday.
(Updates with comments from regional SPD in the sixth paragraph.)
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