The rumor has been circulating for days, and is confirmed in political circles: Lauro Biondi will still be a candidate – as he himself had requested – but on the League list. The city councilor, who concluded the legislature as the only representative of Forza Italia in the majority benches, had been in the process of making an official announcement for days, which was always postponed. Until today, which is somehow decisive: less than a month before the elections, the delivery of the lists to the town hall begins (you have until 12pm tomorrow). The League will put Lauro Biondi’s name on it. And then, today, he will present his candidates to the press and to the city.
Biondi has often had tense relations with Forza Italia. The reply from the Club della Libertà (a branch of the party, created at the time by Silvio Berlusconi) to the local leaders was published yesterday, in which it was denied that Biondi was no longer a member of the Azzurri. Among the reasons for the rift, the lost harmony between the councilor and Rosaria Tassinari, councilor from 2019 to 2022, then deputy, then rose to the role of Emilia-Romagna coordinator and today candidate for the European elections. Biondi, a veteran of Forlì politics in the city council since the 1990s, had hypothesized not to run again: he said so in February, on the sidelines of a press conference, also launching the idea of launching a civic list in support of Zattini.
In the last meeting of the council, Monday 29 April, the twist: he had publicly expressed his willingness to run again, obviously turning to Forza Italia. The party had remained cold, making it clear that it was now complete, perhaps hypothesizing a different role for him. The day Forza Italia presented its list, Biondi lit the fuse of controversy, triggering a back and forth: the relationship with the Azzurri (for him who last summer had proposed naming the future park of the former Eridania to Silvio Berlusconi) did not end well.
At that point, if he really intended to reapply, there was only one concrete possibility left: the League. Moreover, for him, who is a republican outside the PRI, there is a precedent: the Northern League had hosted Alessandra Ascari Raccagni (now running for civic Forlì Cambia) in 2019. Wherever he is, politics remains a great passion of his: when he was elected president of the flood commission, even the Democratic Party voted for him, which then repeatedly contested his work, until the final report, considered by the left to be acquittal against of the council. Biondi dreamed of being a candidate in parliament for the latest elections: the party preferred Rosaria Tassinari instead of him.
The move will have political consequences. One concerns the Azzurri. With Biondi’s farewell, none of the councilors elected in 2019 no longer supports that party (Marco Catalano and Damiano Bartolini have moved to Fratelli d’Italia, as well as Fabrizio Ragni, who entered in 2021 as the first of the non-elected). Therefore, the group of candidates appears totally renewed.
The other reflection concerns the League which, even if the polls no longer give it 24% of the 2019 administrative elections, fields another important name: the presence on the list of the outgoing councilors Daniele Mezzacapo and Andrea Cintorino, in addition to the group leader Massimilano Pompignoli, is a given (he is also a regional councilor). From another political group, in addition to Biondi, there are two other candidates: the outgoing welfare councilor Barbara Rossi and the councilor Francesco Lasaponara have already been announced, both from the ‘Centrodestra per Forlì’ council group.
Marco Bilancioni
