Michael Naumann

Naumann graduated with a PhD in political science from Munich University in 1969 and continued his studies as a Florey scholar at Queen's College, Oxford.

[3] Between 1998 and 2001, Naumann served as the first Secretary of Culture (German title: Beauftragter der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien) for the federal government before returning to the publishing world.

In late 2007 Naumann became the official Social Democratic Party of Germany candidate for the mayor election in Hamburg 2008 on 24 February that year.

The election in Hamburg was not far off when Beck made these ambiguous statements in favor of such minority coalitions tolerated by the Left Party, whereas before, he had utterly denied it.

A specially pronounced issue Naumann dwelled on during his campaign was acceptance of referendums and honesty on behalf of the city's government, as incumbent conservative mayor Ole von Beust was known for having had ignored a number of referendums and lying about the issues they were involved with, especially selling off of community property to private investors, such as the city's public state hospitals and parts of the Hamburg harbor.

According to pollsters, approximately 3% of the crucial swing votes in the final week deserted the Social Democrats, and either stayed at home or switched to the conservatives.

In fact, the only demographic that prevented Naumann from becoming mayor were senior citizens of 60 and older,[4] which prompted Kurt Beck to say that the SPD would be "the coming force of the future" in Hamburg.

In the end Naumann's desired partners, the Greens sided with what they'd expressed as their second choice in advance, von Beust's conservative CDU, even though this prior announcement during their campaign had cost them 2.7%, dropping from 12.3% in the previous 2004 elections down to 9.6%.