THEIR OWN RUDY:

Center-right solidifies gains in Italy (Elisabetta Povoledo, April 28, 2008, IHT)

Promising to crack down on crime, the center-right candidate Gianni Alemanno, who ran with the conservative People of Freedom party, defeated Francesco Rutelli, who had served as mayor of the capital from 1993 to 2001. Alemanno won a comfortable majority with nearly 54 percent of the vote. He will be the first rightist leader to govern Rome since the end of World War II.

Losing the vote dealt a double blow to the departing mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, who left city politics to become the leader of the newly formed Democratic Party, which lost the April 13-14 national elections to the conservative leader Silvio Berlusconi.