Political Career
Since 1975, Wulff has been a member of the CDU. From 1978 to 1980, he served as federal chairman of the Schülerunion, a political high school student organization affiliated with the Christian Democrats. From 1979 to 1983, he was on the executive board of the Junge Union and became its regional chairman in Lower Saxony in 1983. However, he decided to resign from the board in order to pursue his law degree, which he completed in 1986. The same year, he was elected a city councillor in his hometown. Since 1984, he has sat on the CDU's regional party council of Lower Saxony, serving as its chairman since 1994.
The Christian Democrats made Wulff candidate for Premier in the run-up of the 1994 Legislative Assembly elections. However, the popular incumbent Gerhard Schröder won and secured an absolute majority in the Lower Saxony legislature, leading some observers to doubt the wisdom of the provincial party nominating a young and neophyte candidate for Premier. After four years in opposition, the 1998 legislative assembly election brought another opportunity for Wulff to become Premier. Indeed, the federal Christian Democrat party, led by Chancellor Helmut Kohl, pinned their hopes on Wulff – a Wulff victory would have stopped the inevitable rise of Schröder to the Social Democrat nomination for Chancellor. However, supported by a wave of sympathy for his candidacy for chancellor in the 1998 federal election, Schröder was returned to power by an enhanced majority – leaving Wulff to serve five more years as provincial leader of the opposition.
Schröder won the 1998 federal election, leaving the post of Premier to his anointed successor, Interior minister Gerhard Glogowski. The latter soon stumbled over a scandal involving free travel paid by TUI and was succeeded by Sigmar Gabriel. In the wake of the 1999 scandal, as well as rising discontent with Schröder's federal cabinet, the Christian Democrats rose in the opinion polls and became a serious contender for power in the 2003 assembly election.
Wulff has been one of the four deputy chairmen of the CDU party at the federal level since 7 November 1998, and has been a board member of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation since 2003.
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