Rome Elects First Rightist Mayor In Decades

ROME — Two weeks after sweeping national elections, Italy’s center-right parties confirmed that they had captured the mood of the country by winning runoff votes on Sunday and Monday in several cities. In a closely watched race, Rome elected its first rightist mayor since World War II.

Mr. Alemanno, waving an Italian flag from a city hall window, promised to fight crime.

Promising to crack down on crime in Rome, the victor, Gianni Alemanno, who ran with the conservative People of Freedom party, took nearly 54 percent of the vote. Mr. Alemanno defeated Francesco Rutelli, who had served as mayor from 1993 to 2001.

The result represented a double blow to the departing mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, who left city politics to become the leader of the newly formed Democratic Party. The party lost the April 13-14 national elections to the center-right coalition, led by Silvio Berlusconi.

“It’s a result we built up over time,” said Mr. Alemanno, a former environment minister, who began his political career with the youth section of the Italian Social Movement, a neo-Fascist party formed by Mussolini supporters after the war.

The focus of the hard-fought campaign in Rome shifted to citizens’ safety after a woman was raped — allegedly by an immigrant — 10 days before the vote. The attack shocked the capital and recalled an attack in Rome last fall in which a Romanian immigrant was arrested in the fatal beating of Giovanna Reggiani, a 47-year-old woman.

On Monday night, Mr. Alemanno said on television that his first act as mayor would be to visit Ms. Reggiani’s widower “and promise him that what happened to his wife would never happen again.” He also announced that he would call a meeting of security officials “to bring order to our territory” and move Rome “out of its urban blight.”

The defeated candidate, Mr. Rutelli, was deputy prime minister and culture minister in the government of Romano Prodi, the departing prime minister. Speaking at a news conference on Monday, Mr. Rutelli said that the right had exploited the security issue during the campaign but added that the “center-left would do well to pay attention to its shortcomings when it comes to security issues.”

Nearly six million Italians were eligible to vote in runoff elections on Sunday and Monday in five provinces and 43 municipalities. Despite the loss of the capital, the center-left candidate Nicola Zingaretti won the presidency of the province of Rome, while the center-right candidates won three of the four other provincial contests. Center-right candidates won more than half of the municipal posts at stake.

Turnout for this second round of elections was reported as 62.5 percent, considerably lower than the first round two weeks ago, when 76 percent went to the polls.

“I will be the mayor of all Romans,” Mr. Alemanno said Monday night at a rally at his campaign headquarters, celebrating his victory.

“Rome is beginning a new phase,” he said.

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