Andreas Hupke leaves the Greens – new electoral alliance for Cologne city center!

Andreas Hupke leaves the Greens – new electoral alliance for Cologne city center!

The Cologne district mayor Andreas Hupke finally pulled the ripcord today and announced his departure from the Greens. At the age of 75, Hupke looks back on decades of membership in the party and at the same time announces the start of his own electoral alliance, which will be called “Action Alliance Downtown/Deutz” or “Team Hupke”. He wants to run as a candidate in the local elections on September 14th. This reports t online.

The break between Hupke and the Greens became apparent in the spring when the party did not offer him a candidacy again. According to Hupke, they wanted to sort him out because of his age. This has been a topic of conversation not only for him but also for many supporters.

A new beginning and clear announcements

His decision to suspend membership of the Green Party came with immediate effect. Hupke wants to act as an individual candidate in the future and draw on the experience from his many years of political career. This balance is impressive: in the last election in 2020, the Greens under Hupke's leadership achieved an impressive 45 percent of the vote in the city center. “I have always fought for the cause,” explains Hupke, who emphasizes that he does not want to enter into alliances in the district council and that he wants to clearly address challenges such as climate change and homelessness.

But the new course is not without challenges. Hupke is in sharp contradiction to the current mayor Henriette Reker, who recently used Madrid as a negative example of the state of the city center. Hupke criticizes this statement and expresses his frustration with “power pullers” within the Greens. “There were subtle hints about my age, about the so-called old white men,” he says. This prompted him to make a clear break, whereby he also stated that, despite all the differences, he always fought for the cause.

His electoral alliance was officially approved for local elections by the Cologne election committee - an important step for Hupke and his team. Nevertheless, the review does not go uncommented. The co-chairs of the Green Party, Kirsten Jahn and Cyrill Ibn Salem, are disappointed by Hupke's departure and emphasize that they made offers to talk, but he did not accept them. The Greens regret his decision and firmly reject the accusation of age discrimination, as the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger reports ksta.

Hupke is now going into the election campaign with an eleven-point program and shows that, at 75, he is far from being a scrap. Cologne can be curious to see what the experienced local politician will do with his new political leeway.