Regionals, “I love you”: in Genoa an “intimate” Orlando closes the electoral campaign

"In these weeks you have supported us, pushed us. You have loved us. I love you too", says Orlando from the stage

GENOA – Genoa, this time, will not be “an idea like any other”. Paolo Conte will excuse us for the risk, but after all Liguria is a serious matter. Politically speaking, of course, because gathered in the Porto Antico there is the entire government for Marco Bucci. And why, not far from there, at the Politeama theater the wide field that pulls the sprint to Andrea Orlando takes yet another photo and repeats the coexistence tests.
With just a few hours to go until the kick-off of the long autumn challenge – the first half here, in Liguria, the second in November, with Emilia-Romagna and Umbria – it’s raining. It’s raining and even Orlando’s supporters and aficionados have gathered indoors. In the theater, in the “available room with the greatest number of seats available”, the former minister’s electoral committee explained yesterday. There is this, and as the newspapers report in the morning, also the concern of a certain disinterest from the electorate. And so it is better to have a cozy place than a scary widening when, after rivers of declarations, proposals, controversies and a flurry of appointments, all that remains is to take a snapshot of the last popular embrace.
It rains so much that in the morning a weather alert even falls on the ballot boxes, but then the prefects avert extraordinary measures. The script, therefore, does not change and the more than one thousand red velvet seats of the Politeama fill up. The doors open at 4:30 pm, and there are those who run to the hall to sit in the second row behind Elly Schlein and Giuseppe Conte. Who arrive and do not make any statements: “They speak from the stage”, say theirs. In the meantime, the audience in the hall grows.
Until the stop of the masks arrives: entry is prohibited, the hall is full. Shortly after 5:30 p.m. the curtain rises with the family photo, with all the leaders lined up on stage for the three-time minister: Elly Schlein, Giuseppe Conte, Angelo Bonelli, Elena Bonetti, Nicola Fratoianni, Enzo Maraio, with Carlo Calenda who tunes in to the theater via video link.

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After the ritual shots, the first to speak is Benedetta Motta, a young doctor and a specialist in food science. Voice of the ‘mythological’ civil society and sharp plastic on one of the issues on which the center-left is pushing hardest to beat Bucci: the health issue. “The theater is packed and outside there are another thousand people who couldn’t get in”. A good sign, the 26-year-old lets herself go.
So much so that Orlando, between the secretary of the Democratic Party Schlein who stings (“Write Bucci and read Toti”) and the leader of the 5 Star Movement Conte who takes it out on Antonio Tajani for the collapse of the Morandi bridge (“Enough protecting our little friends, enough with this rotten and unhealthy politics”), gets off the stage and goes to greet those who were left out. Handshakes, greetings, a few choruses of affection. An affection that shortly after comes alive again on stage, with Orlando showing himself in a more intimate version. Almost unprecedented for the politician, ‘the public man’ who often, during the speech, looks at his father sitting in the front row. “I go to a field that I don’t frequent easily,” he admits. “In these weeks you have supported us, pushed us. You have loved us. I love you too.”