With Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit facing his political Waterloo, all eyes have turned to Raed Saleh, who could become the first mayor of a major German city with foreign roots. The German capital’s changing demographics could help him.

It’s a Friday evening and Raed Saleh makes himself comfortable in the backseat of a luxury sedan for the trip back to his past. To a collection of high-rise housing projects in Spandau — a working class neighborhood located on the edge of the city and of its society.

His driver comes to a stop in front of a gymnasium and Saleh climbs out. Inside the building, it is loud and smells of sweat. Some 200 young men are playing soccer on two different floors, with games sometimes going until three in the morning. Hip-hop is booming from the speakers and there is sparkling water and sausage on offer in front of the locker rooms.

The project is called “Midnight Sports,” and it is designed to offer Turks, Arabs, Germans and young men of up to 40 additional nationalities an alternative to hanging about on the streets. A kind of occupational therapy for the disadvantaged.

Saleh, 36, floor leader for the center-left Social Democrats in Berlin’s city-state parliament and one of two or three SPD politicians vying to ultimately succeed Klaus Wowereit as the city’s mayor, knows many of the soccer players personally and they greet him with handshakes. After all, Saleh — who comes from a poor family, has eight siblings and had few prospects — grew up in similar circumstances. Now, though, he smiles as he watches the games. “The police have less to do now,” he says.

The young men in the gymnasium represent a new chapter in the history of social democracy, at least as Saleh sees it. “First, the SPD helped the workers, and then women,” he says. “Now, it is the turn of the immigrants.” And he’s not just thinking about those participating in Midnight Sports. He is also thinking of himself.

With Wowereit’s hold on power weakening — the result of massive cost overruns and eternal delays in the construction of Berlin’s once highly touted, and now mocked, new airport — attention has turned to Saleh, a Palestinian who came to Berlin from the West Bank as a young boy. His first job was making French fries at Burger King. With a bit of luck, he could become the first head of a German state with Arab roots.

Read the full story in Spiegel here.