The 'wide field' in Sardinia holds out: Zedda candidate for mayor in Cagliari

The Campo Largo experiment continues. At least in Sardinia, where the centre-left coalition with the 5 Star Movement has 'closed the file' and chosen Massimo Zedda as candidate for mayor of Cagliari. That is, the president of the Progressisti, mayor from 2011 to 2019, when he left the capital city's seat to challenge, and was defeated, Christian Solinas.

The events affecting the national scenario have stopped across the sea. In Sardinia, the recipe proposed by the centre-left is a sort of replica or second phase of the one that saw Alessandra Todde, national number 2 of M5S win over the centre-right challenger and mayor of Cagliari Paolo Truzzu. The name of Massimo Zedda as mayoral candidate in Cagliari had been in the field since January, when before the regional elections, he had expressed his willingness to run for the municipal elections in the capital city.

The go-ahead for his candidature came at the end of a meeting in the Cagliari Dem headquarters where the PD decided to dissolve its reservations and converge on the former mayor. Also in the light of the fact that the most highly-rated potential Dem candidate, namely secretary Piero Comandini, was elected president of the regional council.For the choice of Massimo Zedda, in the end, there was no need to resort to primaries, to which he had already shown willingness before the regional elections. The Coalition, on the strength of the February result and the 'wind blowing on the island', closed the circle by agreeing on the name of 'synthesis'.

The coalition table also rejected the hypothesis of further widening an already wide field with the entry of Azione and the movement of Renato Soru, the former secretary and former MEP of the PD who left the coalition in February to run for office with an autonomist coalition but did not reach the minimum percentage to have representatives in the regional council.

The electoral competition will be between two Zeddas. In the past few days, the centre-right has chosen its mayoral candidate: Alessandra Zedda, a Forza Italia exponent now close to the League and former councillor for Labour and vice-president of the Region with Solinas as President, from which she left to cover only the role of regional councillor. A former basketball player, Alessandra Zedda is well known in the city for having played for Virtus Cagliari, with which she came close to making the playoffs for the A1. There should also be a third candidate in the elections: the lawyer Giuseppe Farris, a former centre-right exponent, who is running as an independent candidate with a civic list.