In Treviso and Vicenza, Lega and Pd play a good slice of Veneto

Call it a regional appetizer. Spotlights on Vicenza And Treviso, where next Sunday’s elections will provide key indications on the political future of the Veneto. At every latitude. Is there still a centre-left opposition? Will the League be able to withstand the impact of Melonian advance? Or more than the party, en route on the territory, will it be the personality of the individual local administrators to save the Carroccio once again? It’s better to take notes, because in a month’s time there will be an internal showdown – the much-needed congress – between Salvinians and dissidents. After almost three years of poisons. And the same number of commissioners.

The two provincial capitals both weigh, and they both weigh differently. Vicenza is the great bet of the Pd, where the group leader in the region Giacomo Possamai faces the outgoing mayor Francesco Rucco: a right-wing independent, former An, then Pdl and now disputed by the Lega and FdI. The polls give the challenger a slight advantage, especially from a run-off perspective. But in the dem house the ferment is palpable. Because Possamai, 33, does not represent the deus ex machina that Damiano Tommasi revealed himself last year for Verona – civic, with the parties in the shadows, against a centre-right torn apart by internal strife: a unique formula. If anything, a child of the apparatus runs to Vicenza. It is the best the fragile Venetian opposition has been able to express, after being swept away by hurricane Zaia in 2020. Not only that: he runs against the reunited majority forces. For this reason, a victory by Possamai, already a Bonaccinian but not disliked by Schlein, would restore a credible dimension to the Pd. Precisely starting from the city where the M5S, during the last electoral campaign, had tried in vain to steal the leadership of the anti-Zaia from the dem.

And the right? Paradoxically, we play less here. The Rucco administration was rather colorless, it rests on the few hundred votes with which it had secured the election in 2018. And it has to deal with the political fabric of the city, which in the previous decade had vigorously supported the mayor dem Achilles Variati. In short: a small defeat would not be accepted as a catastrophe. Instead, a hunchbacked blow in the first round – Rucco’s great hope, given that pentastellati and civic lists converge on Possamai in the second – would close any debate. That is, reiterating that the challenge for the Veneto remains only a conservative-style derby, between the Lega and FdI.

And then we come to Treviso, the test bench that puts pressure on the Carroccio. Because the Marca has always been a breeding ground for Northern League militants. It is the land of Zaia. And also the epicenter, in partnership with the Lower Padua area, of the regional congress that will be – the three candidates, Stefani, Marcato and Manzato, all come from here. Therefore, it is rumored in La Liga circles, it is impossible to give up Treviso. Not now. Mayor Mario Conte has a strong profile, which is a strength and a weakness at the same time: an atypical Northern League supporter, close to the governor in terms of civil rights, even appreciated by the opposition. “I had a coffee there the other day”, declared Carlo Calenda, passing through the city: “Rather than asking me why, you should ask him what he is doing in the Carroccio”. Challenge him George DeNardi, civic, founder of an IT company, who finds himself facing a mountain also because he has failed to obtain the support of the main parties beyond the Democratic Party. So preparing for a Conte bis is far from unlikely. The real question is: whether his own list, that of the League or that of the Brothers of Italy will guarantee his re-election in the first place, maybe it won’t make all the difference in the world. But from the Veneto, for sure.