Vincenzo De Luca

De Luca was born on 8 May 1949 in the Basilicata village of Ruvo del Monte in the province of Potenza.^[1] He and his family then moved to Salerno in the Campania region at an early age.^[1][2] After obtaining a high school diploma at Salerno's liceo classico named after Torquato Tasso, he graduated in philosophy at the University of Salerno.^[1] Before entering politics, he worked as a philosophy teacher in high schools.^[3]

During the 1970s, De Luca became a member of the PCI, at the time led by Enrico Berlinguer. In 1975, after having been head of the party's provincial organization, he was appointed as provincial secretary, leading the federation for a decade. In those years, he was jokingly nicknamed O Professore (Neapolitan for "The Professor") because of his job as a philosophy teacher.^[4] Due to his impetuous and strong style, De Luca was also nicknamed "Pol Pot", just like the Khmer Rouge dictator.^[5]

De Luca was elected to the Salerno City Council in 1990, holding the posts of both Commissioner of Public works and Deputy Mayor.^[1] In the spring of 1993, he was promoted to the office of mayor of Salerno due to the resignation of Vincenzo Giordano, who found himself involved in the Tangentopoli investigation.^[1] A month later, the resignation of the majority of councilors resulted in the dissolution of the municipal council.^[1] The subsequent elections marked a significant success of De Luca's Progressive List for Salerno, with 57.8% of votes in a second ballot against Giuseppe Acocella of the centre-right coalition.^[1] On 16 November 1997, De Luca was re-elected mayor in the first round with 71.3% of the vote.^[1][6]

Not being able to run for a third term as mayor, De Luca resigned in order to run for a parliamentary seat in the 2001 Italian general election.^[7] On 31 May 2001, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies with of 55.4% of the vote, the highest percentage obtained by a candidate of The Olive Tree coalition in Southern Italy.^[8] After the 2006 Italian general election, De Luca was re-elected at the Chamber of Deputies and was appointed as a member of the Agriculture Commission.^[9]

During the 2006 Italian local elections, De Luca was re-elected as mayor of Salerno for a third term after a run-off election, gaining 56.9% of the vote. He ran as the candidate of the centre-left list Progressives for Salerno, in opposition to Alfonso Andria, the member of the European Parliament supported by The Daisy, and some members of the Democrats of the Left, which were against De Luca's candidacy due to his strong dissent towards the party regional president Antonio Bassolino. In the 2008 Italian general election, he was unable to run due to the incompatibility provided by law between the offices of member of Parliament and mayor of a city with more than 15,000 inhabitants. While in office, De Luca was one of the longest tenured and most popular mayors in Italy,^[10][11] having been ranked first in the 2008 Governance Poll by Il Sole 24 Ore.^[12]

Among De Luca's accomplishments as mayor of Salerno were leading provincial capitals for waste sorting (74.16% in October 2009), safety and quality of life, municipal nursery school system and social policies, and events and culture such as Luci d'Artista.^[1] He also promoted urban transformation featuring major names in the sector, such as Santiago Calatrava (Marina d'Arechi Village), Zaha Hadid (Stazione Marittima), Ricardo Bofill (Crescent and Piazza della Libertà), Oriol Bohigas (Municipal Urban Plan), and David Chipperfield (Cittadella Giudiziaria) that in 2015 won Salerno the Tripadvisor's "Travelers' Choice Awards Destinations on the Rise 2015" among the ten European destinations with the fastest growth in tourism.^[1]

On 30 January 2010, De Luca announced his candidacy to become president of Campania in the 2010 Campania regional election. His centre-right coalition rival Stefano Caldoro, a former minister and leader of the New PSI (a party that merged into Silvio Berlusconi's The People of Freedom in 2009) won by a convincing margin, thanks to a 20% swing in favor of the centre-right coalition, which included the Union of the Centre led by Ciriaco De Mita, an influential former leader of Christian Democracy.^[13] In 2011, De Luca was re-elected for a fourth term as mayor of Salerno with 74.42% of votes.^[14] From 2013 to 2014, while mayor of Salerno, he was also Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transportation under Prime Minister Enrico Letta,^[1] raising again the problem of incompatibility.^[15]

In late 2014, De Luca announced his candidacy as president of Campania.^[1] In March 2015, he won the primary elections with 52% of the vote, becoming the PD-led centre-left coalition candidate for the 2015 Campania regional election.^[1] On 31 May 2015, De Luca was elected president of Campania,^[1] with 41% of the vote, defeating incumbent president Stefano Caldoro with a margin of 66,000 votes.^[16] During the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the postponement of the election from May to September, he was re-elected in the 2020 Campania regional election,^[1] which he won with 68% of the vote.^[17] In November 2021, De Luca was investigated for corruption regarding a scandal involving the maintenance of city streets, public greenery, and parks of Salerno. The public prosecutor denounced the presence of an alleged cartel composed of eight cooperatives, which allegedly rigged the public procurements' tenders.^[18] The news was first reported by Massimo Giletti, who published a video on Twitter that was picked up by the Corriere della Sera.^[19]