Paris gets first female mayor as concierge bites back

[ucrdem]

Source: Bangkok Post


Newly elected mayor of Paris, French Socialist party deputy Anne Hidalgo delivers a speech at her campaign headquarters in Paris, on March 30, 2014

As she bid to become the first female mayor of Paris, Spanish-born Socialist Anne Hidalgo had to endure taunts from her opponents about her modest origins and lack of Parisian roots.

But in the end, voters in the French capital brushed such snobbery aside and defied the national trend by electing the 54-year-old by a convincing margin.

Hidalgo had been expected to be run extremely close by her centre-right rival, glamorous former minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, on a night when the Socialists took a beating from voters across the country because of the unpopularity of President Francois Hollande's government.

But Hidalgo emerged with nearly 55 percent of second-round votes in the capital, comfortably seeing off Kosciusko-Morizet's challenge. An old school feminist socialist, Hidalgo has spent the last 13 years as a low-profile deputy to current mayor Bertrand Delanoe.

Read more: http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/world/402645/paris-gets-first-female-mayor-as-concierge-bites-back

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couldn't resist the title, sorry ... has to do with the UMP candidate, also female, having tonier roots. Pic is from WaPo. Elsewhere the PS (socialist party, i.e. Hollande's) got slaughtered.

[ucrdem]

1. Saturday: Paris poised to make history by electing its first female mayor

Deputy mayor and left-wing Socialist party (PS) candidate for the municipal elections in Paris, Anne Hidalgo (left), and French right-wing UMP party candidate for the mayoral elections in Paris, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, shake hands before a debate in Paris on Wednesday, four days before the second round of the French mayoral elections

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2014/03/29/paris-poised-to-make-history-by-electing-first-woman-mayor/?tid=up_next

[ucrdem]

2. p.s. the concierge reference:

The star and the caretaker -

Her rival Kosciusko-Morizet did herself no favours by characterising their battle as one between "between the star and the caretaker" -- a remark that was seen as a catty reference to Hidalgo's Iberian heritage (the concierges of Paris apartment buildings having, until recently, often been immigrants from Spain and Portugal).

Hidalgo hit back by accusing NKM of being part of a privileged "caste" cut off from the real world, and it was a label that stuck to the centre-right candidate.

From a wealthy establishment family, NKM was widely lampooned for describing the Paris metro as a "charming place" -- to the disbelief of harassed rush-hour commuters.

The battle also focused on sharply contrasting approaches to the city's financing, with NKM having pledged to cut the number of public sector workers to liberate funds for plans to enhance the city centre's status as the world's favourite tourist destination.

[winstars]

3. Am I correct in thinking that concierge equals what we call "the super" in places like NYC?

I have been in Paris and that is my observation although I never really asked...

[ucrdem]

4. yep a euphemism in both cases

concierge means caretaker, but in reality is a cut above a maid which is a femme de chambre ... that's my understanding anyway

[freshwest]

5. Wonder how that will change life in Paris? n/t