After Georgescu’s disqualification, here’s who’s running for president of Romania – POLITICO

Nicușor Dan, the mayor

Nicușor Dan is an independent candidate who has been the mayor of Bucharest, Romania’s capital, since 2020. 

A mathematician, he moved into activism and politics in the late 1990s upon his return from Paris, where he had completed his doctoral studies. His activism, he said, aimed to counter the “real estate mafia” in an effort to preserve green spaces and heritage sites in Bucharest.

In 2015 he founded the Save Bucharest Union, a political party that later became the Save Romania Union (USR), shifting its focus from the local to the national arena. 

Dan resigned from the party in 2017 after a conflict over whether the Romanian constitution should reject gay marriages. Dan didn’t want the party to take a position, but USR members voted to oppose allowing the constitution to restrict marriage to heterosexual couples.

Crin Antonescu, the establishment candidate 

Crin Antonescu is running as the joint candidate of Romania’s mainstream parties: the Social Democrats (PSD), the National Liberals (PNL) and the Hungarian minority party (UDMR). 

A former PNL leader, Antonescu is best known for his stint as interim president a dozen years ago after the Romanian parliament suspended then-President Traian Băsescu from office.