Tauber became a member of the Junge Union in 1991, and he joined the CDU in 1992. From 1993 to 2007 he was town councillor in
Wächtersbach. Since 2005 he also was a member of the county council (
Kreistag) of the
Main-Kinzig-Kreis. 2008 he was elected board member of CDU Hesse. Tauber has been a member of the German Bundestag since the
2009 federal elections. During his first term in parliament, he served on the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth as well as on the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs. In this capacity, he was his parliamentary group's rapporteur on the
Federal Volunteers Service, intergenerational justice and
Intersex. In the negotiations to form a
Grand Coalition of the Christian Democrats (CDU together with the Bavarian
CSU) and the SPD following the
2013 federal elections, Tauber was part of the CDU/CSU delegation in the working group on cultural and media affairs, led by
Michael Kretschmer and
Klaus Wowereit.
Secretary General of the CDU, 2013–2018 On 16 December 2013, Tauber was appointed preliminarily as Secretary General of the CDU by the party's chairwoman
Angela Merkel; he succeeded
Hermann Gröhe, who had been appointed Health Minister after the elections. On 5 April 2014, he was formally elected on the CDU federal party convention, with a record result of 97 percent. Tauber stated after his election that the CDU needed more young people, more women and more migrants within its ranks. During his time in office, he set up a commission tasked with drafting proposals for reforming the party between 2013 and 2017. In the negotiations to form a
coalition government with the
Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU), the
Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the
Green Party following the
2017 national elections, Tauber would have been part of the 19-member delegation of the CDU, had it not been for a serious illness with
emergency surgery. In February 2018 he tendered his resignation as his party's Secretary General, to be succeeded by
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.
Parliamentary Secretary of State at the Federal Ministry of Defense, 2018–2021 Following the
2017 elections, Tauber was appointed Parliamentary State Secretary at the
Federal Ministry of Defence, under the leadership of minister
Ursula von der Leyen. In October 2020, Tauber announced that he would not stand in the
2021 federal elections but instead resign from active politics by the end of the parliamentary term. Due to illness, he resigned from his political offices in April and May 2021. ==Later career==