In the end, the pitch-black clouds that swelled the sky over Versilia for two days did not prove to be a harbinger of any misfortune for the Democratic Party which, for a few hours – in the legitimate superstitions of the day before – feared a counter-exodus on the A11 of a ( presumed) pro-Eike electorate, perhaps initially distracted and enticed by the bridge of the patron saint San Giovanni.
None of this.
If anything, the pouring Florentine rain created, at the end of the dripping autumn morning, a sticky bubble of humidity which was indeed a good omen for the Dems, torn as it was by the roar of the faithful Funarians at the Porta al Prato committee shortly after 3pm, when the ballots for the first 40 sections appear on smartphones and laptops and fly across everyone’s screenshots.
For Eike Schmidt, a civic member of the centre-right, a robust opponent with a Manzonian-like tongue ‘rinsed’ in the Arno who fought until the end, the votes were 4,668, equal to just 39.4%. Sara Funaro already flies round above 60% (60.6% due to fussiness) with the wind in her sails of 7,180 votes. The appeals for prudence are in vain.
There are too many and too ‘smart’ people involved in the electoral campaigns not to understand that, with a similar range – regardless of the origin of the sections, whether they were the more ‘generous’ ones with the centre-right of the Campo di Marte or the redder granitic ones of San Bartolo a Cintoia, there is already sealing wax on the name of Sara Funaro, mayor. And so hugs fly, beers emerge (Nardella chooses the Italian one, because she says she prefers them to the German ones) and a ‘po-poro-popopo’ starts which is so much the 2006 World Cup.
Surgically spot-on sensations. At the end of the counting of all the seats, the Dem candidate received 82,254 votes, while his opponent received 53,558. He finishes 60.56% to 39.44%. A runoff without history where, however, it would be banal to summarize that Funaro won by a landslide and Schmidt flopped.
The reading – incidentally – is that in a second round of elections where less than one in two Florentines voted (47.98% the final turnout figure, ten percentage points less so to speak than the Renzi-Galli ballot of 2009) Sara won despite taking home around 25 thousand fewer votes than Nardella received in his 2019 encore. A sign that, net of the ‘Tafazzian’ divisions on the left, a sign of discontent, whether for the eternal construction sites, for the dear home and for the security emergency, part of the Dem electorate actually sent him.
On the other hand, despite the character’s high profile, Eike Schmidt has not made it through, failing to bring discontent to his side, perhaps also because, despite the civility he himself has repeatedly underlined, perhaps the centre-right parties have not supported him with sufficient conviction (“Many have left him alone…” some rags were already flying yesterday in the opposition). At the end of the fair he supported the dem network, rooted in the city in a homogeneous manner in every district except for some stomach aches in Oltrarno, Santa Croce and part of Campo di Marte.
Sara Funaro is therefore the first female mayor in the history of Florence. Psychologist, 48 years old, Nardellian docg and indicated by him as her dolphin bypassing the primaries, she is now legitimately revved up. “I would like to dedicate this victory to a person who is no longer here, to my grandfather Piero Bargellini. – his first words – I will give my all to do the best for Florence, I will be the mayor of everyone”.
And again: “Florence has a soul, an identity and a history. This history has not been betrayed today. The first female mayor is certainly a historical fact. And as a first act “I will go to visit a 102-year-old gentleman, I had it for him promised”, and then there will immediately be attention to “the regulation of trade, housing issues, safety and obviously continuing the entire tramway route”.
Long faces at Eike Schmidt’s committee in Viale Gramsci but the former director of the Uffizi shows off all the aplomb of the case and immediately calls Funaro to compliment (“But the answering machine went off” he smiles; they’ll talk to each other later). “From today – he says – I am the leader of the opposition in the City Council. I sincerely thank all those who have committed themselves. We will continue to work to carry forward our projects even from the opposition. We will commit ourselves with determination to the problems of safety and true ecology”.
