Andrea Ypsilanti
| Andrea Ypsilanti | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Personal details | |
| Born |
8 April 1957 Rüsselsheim, Hesse |
| Nationality |
 Germany
|
| Political party | Social Democratic Party |
| Alma mater | University of Frankfurt |
Andrea Ypsilanti (née Andrea Dill, 8 April 1957 in Rüsselsheim, Hesse) is a German politician.
Ypsilanti is a member of the Hessian Landtag (parliament) and was chairperson of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Hesse from March 2003 to January 2009.
In the Hesse state elections of 2008, held on 27 January 2008, she was the SPD's candidate for the position of minister-president (Ministerpräsident), or prime minister, of Hesse. In that election, her party received 36.7 per cent of the vote - only 0.1 per cent less than the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of incumbent Roland Koch, which had ruled the state since 1999. Thus, the Hesse SPD came in second, but gained the same number of representatives in the Landtag as the CDU. Overall, the 2008 election led to a deadlock in the state parliament, because neither the CDU and the Free Democratic Party (FDP), nor the SPD and the Green Party, had enough seats to constitute a parliamentary majority, thus enabling the formation of a coalition government. The reason for this was that the Die Linke had entered the Landtag for the first time ever with 5.3% of the vote. Hessian constitution allows for continued operation of the previous government in case of a hung parliament.
Before the 2008 election, Ypsilanti had promised on many occasions to never work together with the Left Party. However, after a "grand coalition" with the CDU was ruled out, Ypsilanti ultimately decided to cooperate with the Left Party in order to be elected prime minister and overcome the deadlock. The first attempt was abandoned after Dagmar Metzger, one of her own party's representatives in the Landtag, declared she would not vote for Ypsilanti because of the latter's cooperation with the Left Party.
...
Wikipedia