German Social Democratic challenger
Peer Steinbrueck took to the Bavarian hills today with about 150
party sherpas, SPD members and media in tow, seeking to burnish
his profile as poll ratings slump.

Trailing by as many as 19 percentage points in the polls
during a campaign for Sept. 22 elections that has been strewn
with gaffes, Steinbrueck, wearing a straw hat and beige hiking
gear, shrugged off any comparison between his 90-minute walk and
his attempt to unseat the chancellor. Polls show that even SPD
voters prefer Merkel to Steinbrueck, 66.

“I don’t give a damn what happened in the last nine
months,” Steinbrueck, unencumbered by a backpack, said during a
pause from negotiating the path up the Lusen, a peak of 1,373
meters (4,500 feet) in the Bavarian Forest national park of
southeastern Germany on the Czech border. “I’m looking ahead,
I’m not looking at the polls.”

Little more than seven weeks before elections that will
determine whether Merkel secures a third term, Steinbrueck is
taking advantage of the chancellor’s absence on vacation to try
and shine more public light on his campaign than on his persona.

The former finance minister said Jan. 30 that he might have
to refrain from irony after German news magazine Focus called
him “the chaos candidate” and Der Spiegel questioned why he
was making “so many mistakes.” The SPD has since dropped
further behind Merkel’s CDU/CSU bloc, from 15 points then to 19
points in a weekly Forsa poll published yesterday.

‘Very Relaxed’

“He’s very relaxed even though the polls are so bad for
him,” said Inge Slowik, an SPD official from nearby Deggendorf
who accompanied Steinbrueck on the hike. “He’s so relaxed that
sometimes he even gives the impression he doesn’t want to run.”
Slowik said that it’s good for people to see that “he’s easy to
approach and he likes talking to people.”

That didn’t extend to a representative of a solar-energy
company, whom Steinbrueck berated. “What kind of garbage are
you telling me?” Steinbrueck yelled into the forest. “It
doesn’t lower energy bills, it puts them up!”

The hike was one of the first stops on a get-out-the-vote
operation “from Bavaria to the coast” running through Aug. 10,
to be followed by about 100 appearances by Steinbrueck and
fellow SPD leaders between now and election day.

The SPD, which fell to its worst result of the post-World
War II era at the last election in 2009, “still has huge
potential,” with the key being persuading past voters to return
to the party, Steinbrueck said. Contrasting his approach to
Merkel’s “sleeping pill over the whole country,” he said he
aims to reach out directly and engage voters by addressing their
“daily problems” such as housing or nursing care.

Campaign Banner

After a campaign focused on social-justice issues such as
rent controls and raising taxes on high earners, the SPD trails
the CDU/CSU by 22 percent to 41 percent in the latest Forsa
poll. Merkel’s Free Democratic coalition partner has 5 percent
and the SPD’s Green allies 13 percent. If repeated on Sept. 22,
that would allow Merkel to rerun her current coalition.

On reaching the summit, Steinbrueck, who this week unveiled
his party’s poster campaign, was confronted by a red banner
unrolled by youth members of Merkel’s Christian Democratic bloc.
“From now on, it’s all downhill for the SPD,” it said.

Wrong-footed once more, Steinbrueck marched past. “What
are they doing here?” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Arne Delfs in Berlin at
adelfs@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
James Hertling at
jhertling@bloomberg.net