Rome's conservative mayor loses to center-left

Media mogul Silvio Berlusconi's conservative party suffered stinging losses today to center-left rivals in all the main mayoral runoff elections across Italy, including a particularly lopsided defeat in Rome, the nation's capital, where the ex-premier had personally campaigned for the unsuccessful incumbent.
The string of triumphs in municipal races proved a sorely needed morale boost for Premier Enrico Letta's Democratic Party, which was compelled to ask Berlusconi's forces to help form a coalition government after months of bickering and nasty internal power struggles weakened the center-left.
Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno quickly conceded defeat in his bid for a second term, glumly acknowledging a landslide victory by center-left challenger Ignazio Marino. With ballots from practically all polling stations counted, Marino had won about 64 per cent of the vote and Alemanno 36 per cent.

Alemanno told reporters that he had congratulated Marino, a 58-year-old surgeon who performed liver transplants for years in the US and Sicily before he jumped into politics in 2006.
In his laconic style, the former neo-Fascist street fighter, who in 2008 became Rome's first right-wing mayor in decades, described the losses by Berlusconi's People of Freedom party as "not positive."
"It's obvious that the political reflection will be loud and clear," Alemanno said, referring to national as well as local leadership of Berlusconi's People of Freedom Party. But he thanked Berlusconi for campaigning for him.

Alemanno ran Rome with an aloof style, and during the campaign was dogged by patronage scandals tainting several municipal agencies.

In his victory speech, Marino said he would aim for a "personal" style of administering the city of 2.8 million people and promised that under his tenure, city hall, atop the ancient Capitoline Hill, would be a place where "merit is rewarded."
Letta's Democratic Party swept all significant races in the runoffs, including in the northern town of Brescia, a traditionally conservative stronghold where a campaign rally led by Berlusconi saw such tension between the two camps that riot police had to separate supporters on both sides.