Conny Oertel has narrowly won the mayoral election in Heidenau. According to preliminary election results, the candidate of the Heidenau citizens' initiative achieved 51.4 percent in the second round of voting. She won with less than 200 votes ahead of Marion Franz (CDU) with 48.6 percent.
Oertel made up a significant deficit from the first round of voting, in which she was around 20 percentage points behind Franz in second place. Max Schreiber, candidate of the far-right minor party Freie Sachen, and Christoph Mitschke for the Upper Elbe Citizens' Initiative for More Democracy, who had finished a clear third and fourth at the end of March, were no longer on the ballot paper.
Only just under 5,800 of the approximately 13,400 eligible voters cast their vote. The voter turnout was therefore 43 percent. The mayoral election in the town of 16,500 inhabitants in the district of Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge was brought forward by a year, as the previous, long-standing incumbent Jürgen Opitz (CDU) is retiring on May 1. Opitz was elected mayor for the first time in 2012.
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