Paris elects first female mayor

Anne Hidalgo, the Spanish-born Socialist Party candidate, will be the first female mayor of Paris, after an unexpectedly comfortable victory in municipal elections on Sunday.

The race between Hidalgo, 54, and her center-right rival, former government minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, had been expected to be close on a night when the Socialists took a beating from voters across the country because of the current unpopularity of President Francois Hollande's government.

Hidalgo’s win was a bright spot on a bleak election for the party, dubbed "black Sunday" by one Socialist politician.

The National Front won control of at least 14 towns and was on track late Sunday to claim 1,200 municipal council seats nationwide, its best ever showing in local politics.

But Hidalgo emerged with 54.5 percent of votes in the French capital, comfortably seeing off Kosciusko-Morizet's challenge, according to exit polls. Hidalgo has spent the last 13 years as a low-profile deputy to current mayor Bertrand Delanoe, also a member of the Socialist Party, who is stepping down. Prior to Delanoe, Paris government had been considered a stronghold for conservatives.

Hidalgo will now join an exclusive club of women who have taken charge of major cities around the world. Members currently in office include Ana Botella, the mayor of Madrid, Cape Town's Patricia de Lille, Carolina Toha, who runs Santiago, Chile, and Annise Parker, the mayor of Houston.

Born near Cadiz in the southwestern corner of Spain in 1959, Hidalgo moved to France as an infant and grew up in a working class suburb of Lyon. As a child, she spoke Spanish and French and became a French national at the age of 14, dropping her native Christian name Ana in favor of the more traditionally French “Anne.”

She has been known to approvingly quote the words of writer Sacha Guitry: "Being a Parisian is not about being born in Paris, it is about being reborn there."

Hidalgo was an adviser to former Labor minister Martine Aubry, the architect of France's 35-hour work week, but was a relatively late entrant to the Socialist Party, only signing up in her mid-30s when the party was under the leadership of Lionel Jospin — a leader with a similarly unflashy style and strong reputation for integrity.

After Hollande was elected president in 2012, Hidalgo was widely tipped for promotion to ministerial office, but opted instead to remain in city government.

Described as "honest, serious and modest" by her friends, she also has a steely side, according to a long-time colleague on the council that governs Paris, Green deputy Denis Baupin.

"It is a case of an iron fist in a velvet glove," he says. "Behind the apparent flexibility, she likes to get her way."

Her rival Kosciusko-Morizet did herself no favors by characterizing their battle as one "between the star and the caretaker" — a remark that was seen as a catty and snobbish 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, as the conservative is colloquially known, of being part of a privileged "caste" cut off from the real world, and it was a label that stuck to the center-right candidate.

From a wealthy establishment family, NKM was widely lampooned for describing the Paris metro as a "charming place" — to the disbelief of harried 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 center.

Hidalgo has promised major investments in housing, transport and green spaces, with the aim of reversing a middle and working class exodus to the suburbs.

She has promised to create 10,000 new social housing units and 5,000 kindergarten spaces.

Her administration will also have a distinctly Green tint to it as a result of a deal cut after the first round of elections. Under the pact, the Greens are expected to double their representation on the council that oversees the mayor's work and take approximately one fifth of the deputy mayor posts on the city's executive.

Al Jazeera and AFP