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Francesco Rutelli takes a while to list his seven years of accomplishments as mayor of the Eternal City: he cleaned up the water and the air, finished a host of projects to ready Rome for the Jubilee celebrations of 2,000 years of Christianity, privatized many city agencies and gave Rome more parking places than any other city in Italy. "What's happened in Rome isn't only the Jubilee," he says.
The mayor may be his own p.r. man, but he will resign when the Jubilee ends early next year to pursue a loftier position. The poster-boy of Italian politics is the prime ministerial candidate of the center-left coalition for the general election next spring. His opponent: media magnate
Silvio Berlusconi. Tagged a contest between the più ricco and the più bello, the richer against the more handsome, the race pits Berlusconi's money against Rutelli's charm. Rome's mayor has a kind of Kennedyesque sway over his fans, although his nicknames — "The Pleaser" and "Pretty Boy Frank" — aren't quite up to J.F.K. stature. "I sort of like the guy," says Francesca Greco, assistant to a television film producer. "He's good-looking."
Other Romans are tougher. "He's a lot of hot air," complains Yuri Leoni, an engineer who voted against him twice. "Lots of sizzle and no steak. He's done a lot of little stuff, but nothing that will be remembered. So, now we have some new sidewalks."
"Hot air" is a frequent criticism of Rutelli, who can't seem to answer a question in less than 10 minutes. But being long-winded is hardly a political handicap in Italy and has not hurt Rutelli's 25-year career. He was national secretary of the Radical Party at 26, a Parliament member at 29 and mayor before he turned 40. He promises some innovative campaign gimmicks — including a big Internet effort — and has signed up U.S. election experts Greenberg Research in hopes they'll bring him the same results they did for Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Ehud Barak.
Rutelli got his break on the national scene after Berlusconi's Freedom Alliance won big in April's regional elections. The right's success triggered the resignation of Italy's first ex-communist Prime Minister, Massimo D'Alema, and revealed major cracks in the government coalition, which includes communists, ex-communists, Greens, Socialists and former Christian Democrats. Current Prime Minister Giuliano Amato originally wanted to lead the left in general elections but was persuaded to step aside for the Young Turk. While Amato has experience (he has been Prime Minister twice) and international prestige, the polls indicated that only one man could beat Berlusconi: Francesco Rutelli.
Politically, Rome's mayor has a checkered past. He got started with the Radical Party when it successfully campaigned to overturn Italy's ban on abortion. He later switched to the Greens, and now he's in the small and fractious Democratici, allied with E.U. Commission President Romano Prodi and several other mayors. Rutelli describes himself as "a liberal democrat, an environmentalist and a Catholic." His weakness in the center-left coalition is that he doesn't come from the old Italian Communist Party, whose descendants carry considerable weight in the alliance. Yet that may also be Rutelli's strength, making it hard for Berlusconi to play the anti-communist card against him. "Berlusconi will have problems with my candidacy," Rutelli predicts. "He doesn't know how to organize his campaign against me."
Some of Rutelli's detractors, inside and outside his alliance, would like to paint him as a lightweight, but Paolo Gentiloni, one of the mayor's top aides and strategists, demurs: "Italians and Romans in particular know how difficult this city is, and no one expected him to resolve the hardest problems. He didn't turn Rome into Helsinki, but for the first time the city had a stable government for seven years, and no scandal case." The mayor also managed to keep the city more or less livable during the Jubilee, with the millions of additional pilgrims the festivities brought.
Rutelli has invited Berlusconi to sell off his television and communications empire, and challenged him to a series of televised debates, "not to bicker but to help Italians understand the positions." The magnate might find debating the mayor a daunting task. After all, Pretty Boy Frank is pretty good when it's his turn to talk.
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New Heights
From virtual life in a Geneva lab via a bird's eye view of the Alps to a pavement perspective of old and new in Greece and Rome
Photo Gallery
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Firm Foundation
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Next Revolution
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Italy's Future
Will center-right media magnate and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi regain the title in the spring? He's up against Rome's Mayor Francesco Rutelli in the center-left corner
Speaking in Tongues
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