Germany’s divided AfD selects new top duo for election Selection of new candidates comes amid growing in-fighting.

COLOGNE — The far-right Alternative for Germany on Sunday chose two new lead candidates for September's election in a sign that the party's infighting is boiling over just as it hopes to secure a significant block in the Bundestag this autumn.

The new candidates will sideline party leader Frauke Petry, who had wanted to pull the party toward the political mainstream. However, the AfD is hoping to maintain its appeal by selecting electoral candidates from opposing ends of the political spectrum: Alice Weidel from the liberal wing of the party and Alexander Gauland, a conservative.

The AfD is polling at about 10 percent, behind the Christian Democrats (34 percent) and the Social Democrats (30.5 percent).

The new duo was appointed with 68 percent of votes of AfD delegates.

Party leader Petry suffered a major defeat on Saturday after 600 party delegates chose not to discuss her proposal to shift to the center ground by pursuing a “Realpolitik strategy.”

Earlier this week, she had accused Gauland of pursuing a course of “fundamental opposition” and announced that she would not put her name forward as party candidate for the election.

In an interview with the German TV channel Phoenix on Sunday, Petry said: “Those who represent such a non-strategy should stand in front,” wishing Gauland “good luck.” However, she refused to step down, saying: “I don’t intend to run away from my tasks.”

Weidel, the candidate for the state of Baden-Württemberg, is a business consultant and lesbian mother, who is considered a liberal. In her victory speech, she said: “We will be the only real opposition party in the Bundestag.”

“If you want a bureaucratic European centralized state with the capital in Brussels, vote for [the current government],” she said. “If you want a sovereign Germany living in friendship with its neighbors, vote AfD.”

Gauland, regional party leader in Brandenburg, and a former member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), who is viewed as a conservative, called for unity after the clashes among party factions in recent months: “From this day on, all conflicts in this party should end. From today on, we will only attack political enemies.”

“We want to keep our home country, preserve our identity and be proud of being German,” he said. “We want our country back, and that’s why Merkel and [Social Democrat Martin] Schulz have to go.”

The delegates rose in standing ovations and shouted: “Merkel has to go!”

Earlier in the day, the convention agreed on its election platform after two days of occasionally wild discussion, adopting the main demands of “ending the uncontrolled mass immigration into our social systems,” and leaving the eurozone.

Party delegates announced that they would also collect donations for two police officers who suffered injuries during a protest on Saturday against the far-right party.