At age 72 Winfried Kretschmann was long uncertain if he should run again, but he said he looked to the example of former California governor Jerry Brown in the US, who was in office until he was 80 years old, and decided to throw his hat in after all — to the delight of his party, Deutsche Welle reports.

Kretschmann has mass appeal in Germany's conservative south and is more popular there than the party he represents. An opinion poll by German public broadcaster ZDF in February showed that while 30.3 percent of the electorate polled in Baden-Württemberg planned to vote for the Greens, 70 percent wanted Kretschmann as state premier.

This ability to pull in conservative voters who would not otherwise vote for the Greens has been labeled the "Kretschmann effect."

Kretschmann's political biography reads like a history of the Greens: from his start in left-wing radical politics of the seventies to his eventual move to the center and the success at the ballot box that made him the first Green state premier.

It illustrates how the Greens have changed and succeeded electorally in the decades since their founding to the point where many experts predict they will become the second-largest party after the coming September national election and likely coalition partner for the Christian Democrats (CDU).

Kretschmann was born in 1947 in Spaichingen in southern Baden-Württemberg to a Catholic family that had fled German East Prussia at the end of World War II. According to his biographer Johanna Henkel-Waidhofer, he grew up with stories about his parents' flight and of an older sibling who died during the journey. "He knows what it is to be a refugee," said Henkel-Waidhofer.

As state premier Kretschmann was a strong supporter of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to allow 1.1 million refugees and migrants into Germany in 2015.

But here too his views have changed with the times. In recent years he has warned that there "can be no uncontrolled influx into Europe" and that refugee "male hordes" guilty of crimes should be sent "into the sticks" to make committing crimes harder for them.

"He cares about traditional values and industry and doesn't think much of political correctness, and that is what our people like," Matern von Marschall, a CDU member of German parliament representing the Freiburg District in Baden-Württemberg told DW. "The Greens can be irritated by Kretschmann, but they are happy he is so successful.''

Kretschmann's political awakening came in 1970 when he went to Hohenheim University to study biology, chemistry, and ethics. He studied at a time when universities were the center of massive social change in Germany focused on confronting former Nazi officials who held positions in the West German government, courts and universities. While there he was involved with the Maoist Communist League of West Germany, a small far-left political party that wanted to smash the "bourgeois state apparatus” and during its existence never attracted more than 0.1 percent of national voters. Kretschmann now calls that period of his life a "mistake" and credits his wife for pulling him out of it.

In 1979 Kretschmann found his permanent political home and was one of the co-founders of the Green Party in Baden-Württemberg.

They had grown in support due to opposition to the planned construction of a nuclear power plant. In 1980 Kretschmann was first elected to the Baden-Württemberg regional parliament and in 1986 moved to Hesse to work for Joschka Fischer in the first Green-run regional environmental ministry. Fischer would go on to lead the Greens into their first national coalition government and serve as foreign minister and vice-chancellor from 1998 to 2005.

Kretschmann's political breakthrough came in 2011 when he was the parliamentary leader for the Greens in Baden-Württemberg.

The Greens were buoyed by support for ending nuclear power in Germany following the Fukushima disaster in Japan. The Greens came in ahead of the Social Democrats (SPD), but behind the CDU. After the CDU failed to create their own coalition, the Greens and the SPD entered into a coalition, making Kretschman the first Green state premier in the history of the country and ending 58 years of CDU rule in the state. After the 2016 election the Greens became the largest party in the regional parliament and went into coalition with the CDU.

In the years that have followed, Kretschmann has become known for upsetting traditional politics.

He is a committed environmentalist and social liberal, but talks openly about his diesel-fueled car and the Catholic faith. Those positions create tensions in his party and even caused a rival environmentalist party to be created ahead of the upcoming election.

Kretschmann's unusual positions have led to him being seen as separate from his party and the usual political squabbles. That image led him to be considered for the German presidency in 2016. "He managed to not be perceived as a party man, but rather as a wise representative of the state,” said University of Mannheim political science Professor Harald Schoen.

Kretschmann's image has also changed the image of the Greens, making leading state governments and pursuing coalitions with partners besides the SPD look like a real possibility. "He has shown that greens are pragmatic. You can't govern without that,” said Henkel-Waidhofer.

Winfried Kretschmann is a committed environmentalist and social liberal, but talks openly about his diesel-fueled car and the Catholic faith. Those positions create tensions in his party.

Germany's Green state premier Winfried Kretschmann draws conservatives