Daniel Băluță, the mayor of Sector 4 and the party’s candidate for the General City Hall, officially takes over the head of the PSD Bucharest branch, led for nine years by Gabriela Firea.
Gabriela Firea handed over the leadership of the PSD Bucharest branch to Daniel Băluţă. PHOTO: archive
Daniel Băluță, designated by the PSD as a candidate for the General City Hall of the Capital, will be installed on Thursday, November 13, as president of the PSD Bucharest organization, in an event scheduled at 4:00 p.m.
The former leader of the branch, Gabriela Firea, announced on October 27 that she would hand over the baton to him, in order to avoid internal disputes from affecting the electoral campaign.
“Precisely so that Daniel would not go through what I went through and not be a victim, together with interim president Sorin Grindeanu and our colleagues from the 6 sectors, I decided to hand over the political baton to my colleague Daniel Băluță. I do it with an open heart, sincerely, without resentment”, declared Gabriela Firea at the time.
The decision to appoint Daniel Băluță was validated by the PSD on October 28, together with the vote regarding his support in the local elections. At the same time, Gabriela Firea was elected vice-president of the party for the Bucharest-Ilfov region, a position obtained at the November 7 congress.
PSD candidate, favorite in the polls
According to HotNews, Daniel Băluță is going to officially submit his candidacy to the Electoral Office of the Municipality of Bucharest on Saturday, November 15, and his official launch in the campaign is scheduled for next week.
The latest Avangarde survey, published on Wednesday, November 12, places the current mayor of Sector 4 in first place, with 24% of voting intentions, followed by Ciprian Ciucu (PNL) with 21%, Cătălin Drula (USR) with 20% and the independent candidate Anca Alexandrescu with 17%.
At the bottom of the ranking are Vlad Gheorghe (independent, 5%), Ana Ciceală (SENS, 4%), Virgil Alexandru Zidaru (independent, 4%) and Liviu Negoiță (PUSL, 3%).
In another poll, conducted by Novel Research at the request of the PNL and published on November 3, Ciprian Ciucu appeared in first place, with 26.4%, while Daniel Băluță had 24.5%, the difference between the two being below the margin of error, and Cătălin Drula occupied the third position, with 18.7%, followed by Anca Alexandrescu with 15%.
Also, in a CURS survey published on October 19, Daniel Băluță led with 25%, followed by Cătălin Drula and Ciprian Ciucu, tied, with 18% each, and Anca Alexandrescu (10%).
Gabriela Firea, for almost a decade at the head of PSD Bucharest
As for Gabriela Firea, she took over the leadership of PSD Bucharest in 2016, the year in which she won the elections for the Capital City Hall. In November 2018, he resigned, after learning from the media that Liviu Dragnea, the then leader of the PSD. In protest, she submitted her resignation before the meeting in which she was to be officially removed from the management of the branch.
The position of interim president of the organization was then taken over by Gabriel Mutu, the mayor of Sector 6, and in April 2019, Gabriela Firea returned to head PSD Bucharest, following a decision of the National Executive Committee.
After the scandal of the “horror asylums” in Voluntari and Afumati, which broke out in 2023, the relations between Gabriela Firea and Marcel Ciolacu, who led the PSD, cooled, and she resigned from the position of Minister of the Family.
Until 2024, she also held the position of first vice-president of the PSD, but gave up this position after internal negotiations with Marcel Ciolacu, who would have wanted Daniel Băluță to take over the organization from Bucharest since then.
