Meet the doge
Nicknamed the “Doge of Venice,” Zaia, a former Italian agriculture minister, has spent 15 of his 57 years running Veneto from an office lined with emerald silk in a 16th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal.
He won eight out of 10 votes cast in 2020, the highest approval rating of any regional chief, but is barred from running again because of a two-term limit.
In an interview with POLITICO, he joked about the whirl of theories about his next steps. “I am in the running for everything: [energy giant] ENI, Venice, parliament, minister.”
But when pressed on what he will do, he gave nothing away, only that his focus is squarely on the north. “I gave up a safe seat in Brussels a year ago to stay here,” he said, only adding he would work until the last day of his mandate. “Then I’ll see.”
Amid internal power struggles in the League, Zaia is increasingly seen as an alternative leadership figure by those unhappy with its trajectory. Zaia has clashed with Salvini’s deputy leader Gen. Roberto Vannacci over his revisionist views of the fascist era under Benito Mussolini, but has held back from criticizing Salvini openly.
When asked whether Salvini made strategic mistakes as party leader, he stayed cryptically diplomatic. “We all make mistakes,” he replied.
A changing League
When Zaia joined what was then the Northern League in the 1990s it was a separatist movement, opposed to tax redistribution from the wealthy north to the south, perceived as corrupt and inefficient. But under Salvini’s leadership, the rebranded League became a nationwide party, with a strand increasingly courting the extreme right.
This approach has alienated both mainstream voters, and more moderate and north-focused activists, for whom Zaia is a political lodestar. One major bugbear is Salvini’s drive to build a €14 billion bridge between Calabria and Sicily, seen by separatists as a wasteful southern project sucking in northern tax revenue.