Five Star Made Peace With Italy’s Establishment. Can Its Voters Do the Same?

(Bloomberg) -- Italy’s Five Star Movement has had few more loyal supporters than Michele Spellucci, but now the 37-year-old farmer has had enough.

For the first time since the insurgent movement emerged a decade ago, Spellucci won’t be voting for Five Star on Sunday. Disillusioned by the party’s decision to field a joint candidate with the establishment Democratic Party in a regional election, Spellucci says he’ll cast his ballot for a candidate from the center-right League instead.

Despite misgivings, Spellucci stuck with Five Star when party chief Luigi Di Maio turned to the center-left Democrats, or PD, to form a new government after a coalition with the League imploded this summer. But the choice to form an electoral alliance for the first time in Umbria was a step too far.

“Five Star betrayed us by allying with the Democrats,” Spellucci said. “They will never have my vote again, locally or nationally.”

The results’ significance goes well beyond the size of the small land-locked region, mostly known for its olive oil and agricultural produces, as it is a gauge of whether the deal struck in Rome between Five Star and the Democrats has legs to be replicated at local level.

Umbria’s Five Star supporters bought into their party’s narrative that the Democrats are part of the corrupt politics of the past. And they cheered as it fanned the flames of a healthcare probe that cost the regional governor her job and landed the PD party chief under house arrest.

It’s not surprising, then, that the joint candidacy in Umbria faced an uphill battle from the start—the parties struggled even to find a candidate for governor. They eventually settled on 46-year-old Vincenzo Bianconi, a local businessman with little campaign experience and no political affiliation.

In a sign of unity, Di Maio and PD head Nicola Zingaretti will appear together Friday evening at an event in the Umbrian town of Narni, La Repubblica reported. The event, which faced resistance among members of both parties, will be the first time the allied leaders appear in public together, the paper said.

On the issues, Bianconi and League candidate Donatella Tesei, a 61-year-old lawyer with a long political resume, appear to be in lockstep.

“Our priorities are jobs and healthcare, and we want to relaunch the regional economy which is struggling after the financial crisis,” Tesei said in an interview in Trevi.

Tesei, now a Rome-based lawmaker for the League, moves naturally on the campaign trail, smiling and holding aloft the region’s signature black celery as she works the crowd at a farmers’ market.

“Time is running out and we need to act fast,” said Tesei, who’s also deputy head of the Senate defense commission. Backed by all the center-right parties, including Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, she’ll be a tough adversary, even in a region long dominated by the center-left.

“Those two parties have really been at war in this region,” Tesei said. “They are pushing it with this alliance.”

Bianconi, whose family has run hotels in the region for over 150 years, is trying to keep his campaign focused on local issues while steering away from questions about party alignments.

“We need to invest in communities,” Bianconi said. “Our priorities are unemployment and an aging population.” Tiny Umbria, with the country’s seventh-oldest population, remains one of the regions most affected by the financial crisis, according to the Bank of Italy.

Opinion polls so far favor Tesei. Surveys published before the start of a pre-election blackout put the League in the lead, with an Oct. 10 SWG poll showing Tesei as the preference of between 49% and 55% of the region’s voters.

Spellucci is one of them. “I want real change, and I hope the League will deliver,” he said at a farmers market event in Trevi.

While fielding a joint candidate in Umbria looks risky, the PD and Five Star may figure that if it works here, it will work anywhere.

“A PD-Five Star victory will pave the way for similar alliances in other coming regional elections,” said Lorenzo Pregliasco, a political analyst at polling company YouTrend. “It’s harder to imagine what will happen if they lose.”

--With assistance from Giovanni Salzano and Alessandro Speciale.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net, Jerrold Colten

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