A candidate for a far-right party is elected as the mayor of an eastern German town

BERLIN (AP) — A candidate for the far-right Alternative for Germany was elected Sunday as the mayor of the eastern town of Pirna, marking another milestone for the party.

Official results showed that Tim Lochner — who isn’t a member of Alternative for Germany, or AfD, but ran on its ticket — won 38.5% of the vote in a three-way runoff. Candidates for the center-right Christian Democratic Union, Germany’s main opposition party, and the conservative Free Voters took 31.4% and 30.1%, respectively.

Lochner’s win in Pirna, which has about 40,000 inhabitants and is located between Saxony’s state capital, Dresden, and the Czech border, marks the first time that an AfD candidate has been elected as an “Oberbuergermeister,” the mayor of a significantly sized town or city.

AfD’s first mayor anywhere in Germany was elected in August in the municipality of Raguhn-Jessnitz, in the neighboring eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. That came after the party’s first head of a county administration, Robert Sesselmann, was elected in June in Sonneberg county, in another neighboring state, Thuringia.

The successes come before state elections next September in Saxony, Thuringia and a third eastern state, Brandenburg, in which AfD is hoping to emerge as the strongest party for the first time.

Recent national polls have shown the party in second place at 20% or more as discontent with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party government is running high. While it is strongest in the formerly communist east, it also performed well in regional elections in October in the western states of Hesse and Bavaria.

Pirna is located in a constituency that has elected AfD candidates in Germany’s last two national elections.