The campaign of neo-liberal Mayor of Bucharest to defeat self-styled “MAGA candidate” George Simion in the upcoming second round of the Romanian presidential election has struggled to gain the support of key establishment figures, portending difficulties in building a large enough coalition to take down the populist frontrunner.
Nicușor Dan, a mathematician and activist who has served as the mayor of the Romanian capital since 2020, narrowly edged out former acting President and ex-leader of the National Liberal Party (PLN) Crin Antonescu by a margin of 20.99 per cent to 20.07 per cent to enter into the second-round runoff against Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) leader George Simion, who secured 40.96 per cent of the vote on Sunday.
Theoretically, if all the voters who backed Antonescu rally around Dan, the centrist, pro-Brussels faction would be able to narrowly edge out the populist upstart, as is often seen in other two-round electoral systems like France.
However, it appears that this may be easier said than done for the Bucharest mayor. In a post on social media, Galati Mayor and leading figure within the Social Democrat Party (PSD), Ionuț Pucheanu, said that he would not be making an endorsement in the second round and said that voters should make up their own minds.
“No politician is allowed to tell you who to vote for. And you know better than we do where the country is heading,” he wrote. “Regardless of the political options, it is important that in the second round, you go to the polls with a clear thought and a clean conscience. Don’t let the impulses of the moment or the noise around influence you. Choose the way you feel, responsibly!”
The refusal to back Dan was also shared by Social Democrat Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, who resigned on Monday as his left-wing party withdrew from the coalition government with the Liberals in the wake of the defeat of their preferred candidate, Antonescu, to Simion in the first round of voting.
While the National Liberal Party, the other main party of the now collapsed government, said that it would back the candidacy of the Bucharest mayor against Simion, crucially, Antonescu did not follow suit. Like the PSD leaders, the failed Liberal candidate told his voters to make their choice in the second round according to their conscience.
“Some people voted for me, I urge them to count for themselves with which of the candidates the ideas I presented are compatible. I urge them not to stay at home and I urge everyone who voted for me today to turn out to vote. It is clear that Romanians always know better what they have to vote for, I have no recommendations to make,” he said on Monday.
Despite both Dan and Antonescu broadly representing similar positions, notably on their positions toward aligning with Brussels, some have questioned whether Antonescu’s supporters will simply shift their vote tactically to support the Bucharest mayor over Simion, who has been a vocal critic of the EU and of the war in Ukraine.
National Liberal Party MEP Siegfried Mureșan remarked to POLITICO: “Some of these voters are liberal, some are conservative, some very conservative — and some, particularly the voters of the socialist party, are partly also elderly, less educated, partly also from the rural areas.”
The publication also noted that while Simion beat Dan by 20 points overall, the populist insurgent candidate beat the mayor by 61 per cent to 25 per cent among Romanian diaspora voters living abroad, putting further pressure on Dan to get out the vote among rival factions within Romania.
Simion’s candidacy has been bolstered by a growing antipathy towards EU influence in Romania following the controversial move last year by the government in Bucharest to annul the presidential election in November after populist candidate Călin Georgescu secured a surprising win in the first round. Georgescu and his allies alleged that the move to cancel the election and ban him from standing in the ongoing redo race came as a result of pressure from Brussels over Georgescu’s opposition to continuing the war in Ukraine.
Simion has cast his candidacy as an effective stand-in for Georgescu and has vowed to bring his ally into government should he win. Simion has also represented himself as the “MAGA candidate” in the race and has vowed to be a staunch ally of President Donald Trump and to forge an anti-globalist coalition throughout Europe.
Speaking to Breitbart News last month, Simion said: “I think what we started and continue the MAGA movement with MEGA—Make Europe Great Again, I’m the co-founder of that in Europe—we will be victorious. I think it’s a matter of time after winning in Romania and Poland before we have a majority of governments across the 27 states of the European Union that are pro-Trump and MAGA-oriented.”
Pointing to allies like Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, he added: “I would think we would have a series of pro-Trump leaders across Europe who are winning and will deal directly with the Trump administration and which will stop Ursula von der Leyen and these nasty people that remind us of crooked Joe Biden.”
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