For the first time, a candidate for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AFD) party has been elected full-time mayor.
The election took place in Raguhn-Jessnitz, a small town of about 9,000 inhabitants in Saxony-Anhalt in eastern Germany.
Hannes Loth – a 42-year-old farmer – won 51.1 percent of the vote, according to election results posted on the town’s Facebook page.
“I will be mayor for everyone in Raguhn-Jessnitz”, he writes on social media.
In the past, AFD members have only served as volunteer or part-time mayors.
The AFD victory comes at the same time as the party’s popularity reached record levels in opinion polls.
The AFD shook the German political landscape when the party received 13 percent of the vote in the 2017 Bundestag election, when the party won 94 seats. In the 2021 federal election, the party backed down to around 10 percent.
The party was classified as “suspected” extremist by the German Constitutional Protection in 2021, but that measure was later rejected in an administrative court in Cologne. The party’s youth union, on the other hand, is classified as a “confirmed” extremist organization, which gives the country’s security service expanded surveillance powers.