Tusk's party holds primary to pick Polish presidential candidate for election in 2025

Associated Press -- Associated Press (AP) — Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition held a primary Friday to select a candidate who will run in the nation's presidential election next year.

Party members were choosing between Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, 52, a social liberal who has participated in LGBTQ+ pride parades, and Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, a 61-year-old who is seen as more conservative, to run in the election to succeed incumbent President Andrzej Duda.

“I am very proud of both of our candidates,” Tusk said Friday, describing the contest as a healthy exercise in democracy. Party members had until midnight to vote by secured text message and Tusk was scheduled to announce the winner Saturday.

Trzaskowski has long been considered the obvious candidate for Tusk’s party, but was recently challenged by Sikorski’s decision to run.

Sikorski, who has served as a defense and foreign minister in past governments and has ties in Washington, argued that his experience in the areas of security and diplomacy made him the better choice at a time of war in neighboring Ukraine and political change in the United States.

“There will be a reshuffle of the security architecture in our region. You can’t learn in office — you have to get into it right away,” Sikorski said in an interview with the Rzeczpospolita news site on Friday. “I objectively know more about geopolitics, defense and security policy than Rafał Trzaskowski. I’ve been doing this longer.”

Some of Sikorski's opponents argued that Sikorski's wife, the American writer and historian Anne Applebaum, would create difficulties in the U.S.-Polish relationship when Donald Trump enters the White House because she has criticized Trump in her writings. The headline of an article she wrote for The Atlantic in October was: “Trump is speaking like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini.”

The winner of Friday's contest was expected to be one of the most important candidates in a field of challengers from other parties.

The conservative opposition party, Law and Justice led by Jarosław Kaczyński, which governed Poland from 2015-23, has not named its candidate yet. That person is expected to be picked by Kaczyński.

The date of the presidential election has not yet been announced but a first round is expected to be held in May, and a possible runoff would be held two weeks later if no candidate gets an outright majority in the first round.

Duda will complete his second five-year term in August 2025 and is prevented by the constitution from running again.

It is a priority for Tusk to have an ally win the presidency because it will determine whether he can fulfil his agenda. He is currently unable to fulfill some of his campaign promises because Duda wields veto power over legislation, but also because of opposition within his own three-party coalition.

Trzaskowski in his role has overseen a rapidly changing capital city of nearly 2 million people that has absorbed large numbers of Ukrainian refugees. He ran for president in 2020, and barely lost to Duda then.

The Civic Coalition is led by Tusk's party Civic Platform and also includes smaller parties including the Greens.