the portrait of the candidate for the Pd-Corriere.it secretariat

I want a Pd without snobbishness and managers who can make people understand what they are saying in 30 seconds, so that everyone understands: a simplification, of course, but Stefano Bonaccini’s programmatic manifesto could be summarized with these words of his. Which also explain well the reason that pushes the governor of Emilia-Romagna to want to surround himself, in the event that he becomes secretary, by local administrators, accustomed to talking to citizens on a daily basis and for the most part avoiding the newspeak.

How to vote in the Pd primaries: the guide to the Bonaccini-Schlein challenge

Born in 1967, born in Campogalliano, a town in the province of Modena, father truck driver, mother worker, both communists, scientific high school diploma, Stefano Bonaccini’s cursus honorum is the classic one of a PCI-Pds-Ds-Pd executive: councilor, local manager, party life, tiring life. A pragmatic man, the president of the Emilia-Romagna Region is one of those who avoid approximation and with this spirit he threw himself into the adventure of the primary campaign. This has also been planned, since there has been talk of him as a possible secretary of the Democratic Party for years (something at the time made Zingaretti very nervous). In the end Stefano Bonaccini ran seriously. Someone began to suspect that he aspired to make the leap into national politics when he changed his look a few years ago: teardrop Ray-Ban glasses, a hipster-like beard, turtleneck or dark round-neck sweaters: all the clothing that could make him look like a man of the late PCI apparatus. They say that the author of his transformation is his wife, the stylist Sandra Notary, with whom we are very close: they still celebrate Valentine’s Day with lots of photos on social media. But it is not known whether it is true that she was the one who remade her image for him because he says little or nothing about her transformation, after an initial flood of photos on her Facebook page.

In this period of hectic electoral campaign, the governor of Emilia-Romagna has covered about 600 kilometers a day. A nice tour de force, but he’s used to it: they say that fatigue weighs little on him and that he has always been inclined to convene meetings at any hour of the day or night (infamous times, sometimes for his interlocutors, his collaborators now instead they got used to it). Professional but also a bit moody, Bonaccini was elected to the presidency of the Emilia-Romagna regional council twice in a row. The last one was thrilling: many feared he would lose and already saw the League of victors Matthew Salvini. The polls gave me 5 points down, he remembers now. Instead, even that second time he made it, despite the fact that the 5 Stars had said no to the agreement. But to tell the truth, Bonaccini did not seem to be too sorry for that refusal: If they want to enter well, senn amen, he was able to say one day, without too much hair on his tongue.

After all, in the meantime he had even won the support of some center-right local administrators (and also of some voters), because in order to defeat Matteo Salvini, who was campaigning for the candidate of the Lega Lucia Bergonzoni, instead of throwing it into politics, it dealt with the problems of the region. In order to discredit him, internal opponents call him Renziano because for a year or so he was responsible for local authorities with Matthew Renzi secretary. But apart from the fact that Bonaccini has always been an iron Bonaccinian, the presence of Marco Meloni among his supporters: a Lettian who can’t be readier and who has never forgiven Renzi for having forced his leader to pack up and leave Palazzo Chigi in 2014. Everyone suspects that, if elected secretary, he will have problems with two Southern governors who support him: Vincenzo De Luca and Michele Emiliano. A huge fan of Juventus, he also played football, has two dogs with unusual names (Romeo and Art) and still lives in the same house where he was born 56 years ago, in Campogalliano.