Warsaw Mayor Trzaskowski wins Tusk party’s presidential primary

Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski will be the presidential candidate for Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition following his victory in the party’s primary vote.

Trzaskowski will lead the party’s election campaign in early 2025 after out-polling Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski by 74.75 percent to 25.25 percent in Friday’s primary.

Trzaskowski will most likely face off with a candidate from the former ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), now in opposition. PiS is due to announce its candidate on Sunday.

“I would like to thank you all so much. I’ve got a very strong mandate, courage and determination to defeat PiS,” Trzaskowski said after the results were announced Saturday just before noon. He is expected to present a detailed campaign platform on Dec. 7.

Five years ago, Trzaskowski led a campaign for the Polish presidency against incumbent President Andrzej Duda, narrowly losing to the conservative politician after a race heavily skewed to the incumbent due to PiS’s total control of public media.

Now that Duda cannot run for a third term, Trzaskowski may have a better chance of winning Poland’s highest office.

Trzaskowski’s other rivals are Szymon Hołownia, leader of the centrist Poland 2050 party that is also part of Tusk’s ruling coalition, who announced his presidential bid earlier this month; and Sławomir Mentzen from the far-right Confederation alliance. Poland’s divided Left is yet to announce their candidate or candidates.

Prime Minister Tusk has not actively campaigned for either candidate, but this week he indicated who, according to a poll, might have a better chance of winning the presidency.

“Rafał Trzaskowski beats the PiS candidate 40 to 28 in the first round and 57 to 43 in the second. Radek Sikorski loses to the PiS candidate 28 to 30 in the first round, but wins 54 to 46 in the second. The result of the poll is clear, but it is only an indication. Your vote has the power to decide!,” Tusk said on his social media.

The presidential campaign officially starts on Jan. 8, Hołownia said at a rally on Friday. He is the parliamentary speaker and therefore in charge of some organizational aspects of the election. In reality, however, both Trzaskowski and the PiS candidate will hit the campaign trail by the end of the weekend.

As for the actual date of the election, Hołownia said he hasn’t fixed a date yet but the vote will “certainly take place in May.”

Replacing Duda with a government-friendly head of state would mark a turnaround for the Tusk administration, struggling to get its agenda done against Duda, who has wielded, or threatened to wield, his veto power to stop legislation he doesn’t like. Tusk doesn’t have a majority in the parliament to override Duda’s vetoes.

Trzaskowski, 52, has long been close to Tusk’s party as an adviser and analyst, which gave him enough credit with the leadership to be asked to run in the European elections in 2009. Trzaskowski won a seat, which he gave up in 2013 to join the second Tusk government and then — after Tusk had left to take over the presidency of the European Council — in the short-lived government of Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz that eventually lost power to PiS in 2015.

Trzaskowski won a seat in the Polish parliament in 2015 but swapped being in opposition to PiS to run successfully for the Warsaw town hall three years later. After narrowly losing to Duda in the presidential contest five years ago, he was reelected as mayor again in 2023.