election of 2002, and preparing for the upcoming election of 2003. Mayor of Wageningen On 1 October 2003, Pechtold was appointed Mayor of Wageningen; he remained Chairman of the D66. Minister for Government Reform and Kingdom Relations Thom de Graaf, the D66 Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Government Reform and Kingdom Relations in the Second Balkenende cabinet, resigned on 23 March 2005 after the introduction of democratically elected mayors had been rejected in the Senate. The proposal was especially important; it had become a symbol of the government reform that the D66 had wanted since the party's creation. Pechtold was asked to succeed him as Minister. Pechtold resigned as Chairman and Mayor the same day that he took office as the new Minister for Government Reform and Kingdom Relations, on 31 March 2005. On 29 June 2006 the D66 retracted its support for the Second Balkenende cabinet. The next day, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende offered the resignation of the full cabinet to Queen Beatrix. Pechtold resigned as Minister for Government Reform and Kingdom Relations on 3 July 2006. His fellow D66 cabinet member Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economic Affairs, resigned on 7 July 2006. House of Representatives Pechtold was elected the Leader of the D66 on 24 June 2006 in the leadership election of 2006, defeating Lousewies van der Laan, the party's Parliamentary leader in the House of Representatives. Van der Laan had only a few months earlier succeeded Boris Dittrich, who had resigned as party leader and parliamentary leader in the House of Representatives on 3 February 2006. In 2007 the parliamentarian press chose Pechtold with 31% of the votes as the "Dutch politician of the year 2007". For the Dutch general election of 2006 Pechtold became lijsttrekker (top candidate) and the Democrats 66 lost three seats and became an opposition party. For the Dutch general election of 2010, Pechtold again as Lijsttrekker won ten seats but the Democrats 66 remained an opposition party. With the following Dutch general election of 2012, Pechtold again as lijsttrekker won two seats with the Democrats 66 again remaining an opposition party. During the Fourth Balkenende cabinet administration Pechtold served as government opposition leader. After the Dutch elections of 2010, the D66 won seven-seats in the House of Representatives which journalists claimed was due to Pechtolds leadership during the Fourth Balkenende cabinet time. After the