Race to succeed Merkel sees new front runner

Bloomberg

Germany’s efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic have upended the race to succeed Chancellor Angela Merkel.
In the simmering contest to lead Europe’s largest economy, Bavarian Premier Markus Soeder has emerged as the uncrowned king of the crisis. His hard line to clamp down on the spread of the disease in the wealthy southern state has propelled him to the forefront of Germany’s conservative bloc.
Armin Laschet — the previous front runner, who leads industrial North Rhine-Westphalia in the west — has been put on the defensive, pushing instead to move faster to relax lockdown restrictions. Their next showdown will occur later on Thursday, when Merkel hosts another video conference with Germany’s 16 state premiers to coordinate next steps in the fight against the virus.
While Soeder still faces a long struggle to secure the chancellor candidacy for Germany’s conservatives, he’ll likely maintain the upper hand for now. The country’s contagion rate has ticked up slightly in recent days — new cases rose the most in four days on Thursday — and Merkel has repeatedly warned about the risk of second-wave infections if measures designed to contain the disease are loosened too quickly.