Fund-Raisers and Women Candidates : Politics, American Style: Italians Seek Media Image

Politics American-style, including television image-makers, fund-raising dinners and a vigorous scramble to place hundreds of women on ballots long dominated by men, has finally arrived in Italy.

After a winter of political turmoil and a temporary national leadership, the June 14 parliamentary elections will pave the way for the 47th Italian government since World War II. However, since none of the 88 registered political parties stand a chance of winning a clear majority in the vote, it may take an entire summer of postelection wrangling before a coalition that is capable of governing emerges from the new Parliament.

Meanwhile, in a U.S.-style first in Italian electioneering, the media images of political parties and personalities have taken the spotlight from the economic and social issues that usually absorb grandiloquent Italian politicians on the stump.

For the first time in a nationwide election, dozens of parliamentary candidates have hired media consultants, marketing teams and public relations firms to help “lift them above the chorus of blah-blah that has bored voters stiff,” said a leader in the new Italian craft of political image-making, Sergio Marino. He heads the Rome company Media Marketing.

“But they absolutely don’t want anyone to know they’re doing it because Italian voters are suspicious of this kind of thing,” Marino added. He said his firm is secretly advising 15 candidates in Rome and a dozen more in other parts of the country for the current campaign.

In the past, openly acknowledged political fund-raising among the elite was also anathema in Italy. Even though voters knew that many politicians were backed by powerful individuals and institutions, they voted against candidates who admitted it, said Lucio Pasquale, head of a personnel training firm that has moved into political image-making.

“But now that has changed, too,” Pasquale said. He noted that Giovanni Spadolini, the former prime minister and Republican Party chief, already has openly sponsored several U.S.-style fund-raising dinners.

Going for Women’s Vote

And in a move that makes many of Italy’s macho politicians grit their teeth, some parties have gone to extraordinary lengths to appeal to the female vote by recruiting women candidates.

The Verdi (Greens) party, making its debut in the first general election since it was formed two years ago, has given exactly half its candidate spots to women, and the Communist Party Central Committee decreed that 30% of its candidates must be women.

Like the individuals who are trying modern American approaches to help them stand out in a crowd of more than 11,000 aspirants to the Senate and Parliament, each of the major political parties has its own team of media marketing specialists who have clearly been influenced by America.

Even the formerly humdrum annual congresses of the parties are beginning to take on more and more of the spectacle of U.S. political conventions, with mobile TV crews moving like electronic centipedes among the delegates, University of Milan Prof. Giampietro Mazzoleni said at the first-ever convention of political image-makers in Milan early this month.

Traditional Voting Pattern

Historically, Italian politicians have proceeded by instinct, Pasquale said, confident that 75% to 80% of the voters will align themselves as they always have: roughly one-third to the Christian Democratic Party, endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church; one-third to the largest Communist Party in the West, and one-third to lesser “lay” parties, including the growing Socialists, Republicans, Social Democrats and Liberals. It was assumed that the remaining 20% or so of undecided voters would listen to the traditional campaign verbiage and cast their ballots in about the same percentages.

But, although the impact came late to Italy, television overtook instinctive politics in the last general election in 1983. That was the first nationwide campaign held after new laws that allowed for a proliferation of private television stations around the country, ripe for use by politicians.

“But in 1983, everyone just sat around the table and talked. It was boring,” said Marino, who, along with other Italian media specialists, began studying the work of U.S. image-makers in preparation for the next televised campaign.

“We knew it was time for a change, and now we have a lot of new young candidates, not the old stereotype Italian politicians, who want to see some changes, too,” he said.

Although it may take years to accomplish, Marino and other image-makers believe, the result will be a freeing-up of what has been a predictable electorate as politicians with more charming media images lure more and more voters away from traditional voting patterns.

“When our politicians begin using public relations and marketing strategies the way our fashion designers in Milan have used them, then you will see a movement away from bloc voting, and the parties won’t be able to count on the percentages as they have in the past,” Pasquale said.

Out on the campaign trail, however, the new approach does not appear to have made many inroads among voters.

Although there have been no authoritative polls since the campaign officially began a week ago, most political commentators forecast about the same final voting pattern as in 1983, when the Christian Democrats won almost 33% and the Communists about 30%, with the so-called lay parties led by former Prime Minister Bettino Craxi’s Socialists sharing 23.5%.

However, the campaigning has been jazzier than it used to be. The Christian Democrats, who have led or dominated every government since World War II, brought in the Milan advertising agency R.S.C.G. to produce a $4-million television and newspaper campaign extolling the “rebirth of the family” under their auspices. The party’s television spots are backed by throbbing music composed especially for the campaign by Ennio Morricone, a film composer famous for his scores for spaghetti westerns.

Craxi’s Socialists also are spending heavily to promote 3 1/2 years of unprecedented political stability when the party leader was prime minister.

Yuppies for Communists

The Communists, who raised millions of dollars at an extravagant, yuppie-oriented festival in Milan last fall, are pitching their current campaign toward what the party’s newspaper editor, Fabio Mussi, calls “the new professionals, youth, women.” His paper, Unita, advertises “new battles, new ideas, new desires” and has recently pared down its traditional Communist rhetoric to give more space to stock market reports and business news.

At the same time, the parties have been scrambling for endorsements that might win votes. As a lure to the military and military buffs, for example, the Christian Democrats talked the armed forces chief of staff, Gen. Luigi Pollio, into retiring in order to run for Parliament under their banner.

The party also benefited from the blessing of the church. In a move that aroused protests from the lesser parties, Italy’s Roman Catholic bishops issued a statement May 9 urging Italians to vote for the party whose values are “compatible with the Christian faith.”

Pope John Paul II obliquely extended the appeal May 21, extolling “the presence of Catholics in public life” and telling the bishops that “the aim of Christian commitment is to install temporal order according to God’s design for the true good of man. . . . “

For their part, the Communists talked five prominent Socialists into defecting from Craxi’s ranks and joining their parliamentary list. As an offering to the financial community, not noted for its sympathy to communism, they persuaded Guido Rossi, the respected former stock-exchange control commissioner, to run for the Senate under the hammer and sickle.

Little Impact Seen

But no matter how widely American electioneering techniques have spread, the results are not expected to have a major impact in the three weeks remaining in the campaign because there simply isn’t enough time.

“In 30 or 40 days of campaigning, it is absolutely impossible for anyone to do anything serious,” said Marino. He added that his secret clients have only begun their image-building and, in order to improve, must work steadily between now and the next general election five years hence.

“It’s not only a question of selling a product but of verifying its value over time,” said Pasquale, who takes a no-nonsense marketing man’s approach to the packaging of politicians.

“It’s useless to take a moralistic attitude,” said another media image-builder at the Milan political consultants’ convention. “A parliamentary candidate is a product like any other. As far as his party is concerned, it can be compared to the trade mark of the same product.”

But although all the political media specialists admit to studying their more experienced counterparts in the United States, they are cautious concerning what is worth copying.

‘Perplexed, Afraid’

“We’re fascinated, and so is the Italian public, about how things are done in the U.S.,” said Marino. “But we’re also perplexed and slightly afraid of the effects of some of the techniques.”

As an example, he cited one of his clients, an unidentified leftist politician, who was urged to back his campaign rallies with pop music. “He refused because he was afraid the voters would think he was too frivolous,” Marino said.

But in another area, notably that of political scandals such as the Gary Hart affair, Marino and Pasquale suggested that Italian image-builders might take exactly the opposite tack from their American counterparts.

“The Hart scandal makes everyone here laugh,” said Pasquale. “In Italy, politicians don’t have families. You wouldn’t dream of putting wives and children on their platforms. Here, Hart’s adventures would have won him votes.”