Bernd Riexinger


Bernd Riexinger is a German politician of the Left Party. He was named co-chairman of the party, together with Katja Kipping, on 2 June 2012.

Career

A banker by profession, Riexinger was on the works council of Leonberger Bausparkasse from 1980 to 1990. In 1991 he became a trade union official. Riexinger is a member of the Initiative for networking between trade union leftists and is active in the Social Forum movement in Germany.

Politician

In 2003, Riexinger was among the initiators of mass protests against the Agenda 2010 of the federal government at that time.
On 30 May 2012, Riexinger announced that he would run for the position of chairman of The Left, and on 2 June 2012 he was elected alongside Katja Kipping, winning 53.5% of the delegates' votes. He was elected ahead of second-placed candidate Dietmar Bartsch. Up until this point, Riexinger had been executive director of the Stuttgart division of the trade union ver.di, as well as a member of the executive board of the Left Party in Baden-Württemberg. He had also been a member of the interim executive board of the Left Party in Baden-Württemberg, and previously of the executive board of the party Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative in Baden-Württemberg. On 10 May 2014, he was overwhelmingly reelected along with Katja Kipping as chairman of The Left with 89% of the votes by a national party conference.
In June 2015, he was nominated as a top candidate for The Left in the 2016 Baden-Württemberg legislative election. This nomination was confirmed at the 2015 Regional Congress. The Left failed to get any seats in the state parliament, after receiving only 2.8% of the vote.
In the 2017 German federal elections, Riexinger was one of six Left candidates elected to the Bundestag from Baden-Wurttemberg after the party won 6.4% of the vote.