Romina Plonsker makes no secret of her homeland. In the video interview with her, a plush Hennes, the club mascot of 1. FC Köln – Cologne’s most famous football club -, stands in the background wearing a carnival hat. Next to it hangs an aerial photograph of her hometown of Pulheim. The 34-year-old is serving her second term in the state parliament for the Rhein-Erft-Kreis I district, which is bordered by RWE’s opencast lignite mines. „With the second largest percentage increase in votes after Hendrik Wüst“, she points out. That makes Plonsker a young and female hope of the North Rhine-Westphalian Christian Democrats.