Elections in Rome
The right-wing populist movement Common Man's Front, founded in February that year by the comedian Guglielmo Giannini, performed well and came second, surpassing for just a few votes the catholic Christian Democracy.
Pope Pius XII was rather distrustful of De Gasperi and Christian Democracy, considering the party indecisive and fractious – reformist currents within it particularly, which tended to the moderate left.
On the eve of the municipal election, in which again the Communist and Socialist parties threatened to win out, he used informal connections to make his views known.
[4] De Gasperi instead rejected the idea as politically dangerous to the long term fortunes of his party and sustained a centrist electoral alliance.
The incumbent Mayor Salvatore Rebecchini was re-elected at the head of an executive formed by DC, PSDI, PRI and PLI.
For the first time communists and socialists run separately, undermining their possibilities to won the plurality of votes, as it happened in the previous municipal elections.
The centrist coalition was confirmed again as the strongest political alliance in the City Council, despite the electoral campaign had been deeply influenced by the scandal of the building speculation denounced by the prominent magazine L'espresso.
The centrist coalition which had run the local administration during the 1960 Summer Olympics was confirmed again as the strongest political alliance in the City Council.
After one year of commissarial tenure resulted from the deep political crisis of the centrist coalition, the election led to the formation of the first centre-left executive in the history of the city, formed by DC, PSDI, PRI and PSI.
Despite considerable losses for the Italian Socialist Party, the centre-left coalition in its complex won the majority of seats in the City Council (41 out of 80).
This exceptional growth of the liberals – and the contemporary defeat of the Italian Socialist Party – can be explained by the poor economic results of the first centre-left national government and by the ability of the liberal leader Giovanni Malagodi to draw some votes from the Italian Social Movement and the Monarchist Party, whose electoral base was composed also by conservatives suspicious of the socialists.
This extraordinary result led to the birth of the first red-giunta in the history of the city: the new coalition was formed by the leftist Socialist and Communist Party.
The left-wing coalition formed by communists and socialists won a decisive absolute majority of seats in the City Council.
After the death of the incumbent communist Mayor Luigi Petroselli, his successor Ugo Vetere (PCI) was increasingly under the attack of Christian Democracy, which asked for his resignation in October 1984.
On 30 July 1985 Nicola Signorello (DC) was elected new Mayor at the head of a centre-left executive formed by the members of the Pentapartito coalition.
Pentapartito alliance retained the majority of seats in the City Council and on 19 December 1989 elected the socialist sport manager Franco Carraro as new Mayor.
