He served as municipal councillor, assessor and deputy mayor in Pitigliano, Tuscany, and as President of the Province of Grosseto from 1995 to 1999.
He practiced as a teacher from 1984 and also worked as a freelance journalist, directing the religious section of the regional magazine Toscana Oggi for five years.
In the first round, he received 36.8% of the votes against the 30.7% of the center-right candidate Giovanni Tamburro, and then secured 58.11% in the runoff.
[1][7] Suffering from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, in January 2007 he underwent a lung transplant at Le Scotte Hospital in Siena, with the operation conducted by surgeon Luca Voltolini.
In the summer of 2010, he participated in the thirteenth edition of the European Games for Heart and Lung Transplant Recipients held in Växjö, Sweden.