Outgoing Agriculture Minister Gianni Alemanno has been tapped as the center-right's single candidate for mayor of Rome in next month's local elections. Alemanno, 48, will be running against incumbent Mayor Walter Veltroni of the Democratic Left in the May 28 vote. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote a runoff election will be held June 11.
Alemanno was chosen over Mario Bacini of the UDC, Forza Italia's Alfredo Antoniozzi and Christian Democrat Mauro Cutrufo at a center-right coalition summit Thursday night. Speaking after his nomination, Alemanno said he wanted his three former rivals to be part of his executive if he wins election.
Center-right leaders also decided to create a 'panel of wisemen' which will be responsible for drawing up an electoral platform and campaign squad. The panel will include a representative from each party in the coalition. For certain, Maurizio Gasparri will be representative for Alemanno's right-wing National Alliance party while Antonio Tajani, who lost against Veltroni five years ago, will represent Forza Italia. He is currently his party's whip at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
Alemanno, who was born in the southeast port city of Bari, debuted in politics at an early age with the youth sector of the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI). His first official post was regional secretary for the Fronte della Gioventu', the MSI's youth division. He later became its national secretary.
In the 1980s, he ran unsuccessfully for municipal elections twice in Rome.
In 1990 he finally clinched an elected post with the MSI in the Lazio regional assembly and four years later won a seat in the House on the National Alliance ticket, the offspring of the dissolved MSI. That same year he was appointed coordinator of his
party's department for third-sector affairs.
Alemanno was re-elected to the House in 1996, 2001 and again this month.
In the past legislature he served for five years as agriculture minister in the conservative government headed by Forza Italia leader Silvio Berlusconi.
He is married to Isabella Rauti, the daughter of far-right diehard Pino Rauti who refused to join the National Alliance when it cut its Mussolinian roots in 1995. They have two children.
