Imagine a man running for mayor and the local election authorities disqualify him because he praised a “Lord of the Rings” television mini-series, made the “okay” sign with his fingers, and went to a book fair.
That’s what’s happened to Joachim Paul. He was the front-runner in the mayoral race in the working-class German city of Ludwigshafen (population: 180,000) when the local election council, which is supposed to be politically neutral, declared that he could not run in the September 21 mayoral election. The council relied upon an analysis by the Ministry of Interior, which is the equivalent of the Department of Homeland Security in the United States, for the Rhineland-Palatinate (Rheinland-Pfalz) state.
