(Bloomberg) -- Angela Merkel’s three potential successors began circling for her job as leader of the Christian Democratic Union, offering different approaches to the job of rebuilding support for Germany’s biggest party.

Merkel’s favored pick, CDU general secretary Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, promised to learn the lessons from the refugee crisis that turned many Germans against her mentor. Friedrich Merz, a conservative favorite looking for a political comeback, targeted the voters lost to the nationalist Alternative for Deutschland, though he promised he wouldn’t move the party to the right. The outsider in the race, Jens Spahn, an openly gay, right-wing flag-bearer, called for a “real new start.”

“The CDU is a party of the people in the middle,” Merz, 63, said onstage in the northern German port city of Luebeck late Thursday. “We’re not moving it to the political right or to the political left.”

As the champion of the pro-business old guard, Merz still has momentum since his surprise bid within hours of Merkel’s exit announcement on Oct. 28. For all his rhetoric, he’d likely offer a harder edge.

Merkel’s Mistakes

Kramp-Karrenbauer made clear that she’ll maintain Merkel’s approach of making the CDU a big-tent party, while trying to make amends for some of the errors that have damaged the chancellor after 13 years in power.

“It can’t be the case that things are decided in the government and only then in the party,” Kramp-Karrenbauer, 56, said to an audience of delegates who will cast ballots at a party conference in Hamburg on Dec. 7.

Merz, who’s spent the last decade in the private sector, latterly at a BlackRock Inc., drew applause by vowing to return the CDU to levels of support of past decades -- and that he would cut support for the far-right AfD in half. With a nod to the refugee crisis, he said the state risked “losing control” of the rule of law.

Although Merkel pushed him out of a senior party position when he was last involved in front line politics 16 years ago, Merz has denied any aims of score-settling and on Thursday night he lauded the chancellor’s record after nearly two decades as CDU leader.

“Every new party leader, me too, will be tied to the coalition agreement," he promised. "This will also determine my future relationship to Angela Merkel. Without fuss or quibbles.”

Merkel has stayed out of the race, even though she installed Kramp-Karrenbauer, a popular former state premier, at party headquarters in February. She’s said she aims to stay on as chancellor until the end of her term in 2021.

Polling Lead

Kramp-Karrenbauer edged past Merz in a poll that showed 35 percent of CDU loyalists preferred the general secretary, while 33 percent supported Merz, according to broadcaster ZDF. Spahn was in the single digits. The contest will be decided by a private ballot of 1,001 delegates.

Merz and Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is known in political Berlin by her initials AKK, both won solid applause, signaling that many delegates are still making up there minds. The event, for delegates from three northern states, was the first of eight regional conferences through the end of the month.

“I want to find out whether AKK is really more than a copy of Merkel,” Sebastian Knoke, a delegate from Trittau, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of Hamburg, said in an interview before the event. “I like the clear language of Merz, but don’t understand why he is suddenly returning to politics."

Eckhard Roeder, a party member at the Luebeck meeting, spoke for Merz supporters.

“I’m happy he’s back,” 68-year-old Roeder said. “He’s definitely not returning to politics because of the money, but because he wants power. He will go for the chancellery.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Arne Delfs in Luebeck, Germany at adelfs@bloomberg.net;Patrick Donahue in Berlin at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Michael Winfrey

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