Battle on to become Paris' first female mayor

Anne Hidalgo, left, and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet are competing to be the new face of Paris. The election this month will mark the first time in this city's long history that the mayor won't be a monsieur. Thibault Camus / Associated Press

Campaign marked more by duel of personal digs than policy ideas

It's a battle that is guaranteed to make history.

A fiery, "killer" former minister and Paris' left-wing deputy mayor are vying to become the French capital's first female mayor.

The two women have been engaged for months in a fierce duel to try to persuade Parisians voting in municipal elections on March 23 and 30 to trust them with one of the highest-profile roles in French politics, and one widely seen as a potential steppingstone to higher office.

On the right is Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, a 40-year-old mother of two and self-declared political "killer" who graduated from the elite Ecole Polytechnique university.

An ecology minister under then-president Nicolas Sarkozy, she is now a lawmaker from the main opposition UMP party, which has been hit hard recently by several corruption cases and scandals.

On the left is Anne Hidalgo, 54, the daughter of Spanish immigrants. Seen as serious but lacking pizazz, Hidalgo is only just emerging from the shadow of her boss, Mayor Bertrand Delanoe.

With no previous ministerial experience, she has been deputy mayor of Paris for nearly 13 years.

She has tried to put some distance between her campaign and the current policies of a Socialist government suffering from record-low popularity, and poll after poll has given her as the winner.

The duel between Kosciusko-Morizet - widely known as "NKM" - and Hidalgo has been marked more by acrimonious digs against each other than by their policies for the future of the city of 2.2 million people.

'I am a killer'

Kosciusko-Morizet's team reportedly qualified the contest as a "battle between the star and the caretaker", in what was seen as a reference to Hidalgo's Iberian heritage (the concierges of Paris apartment buildings are often Portuguese).

Hidalgo hit back by accusing Kosciusko-Morizet of being part of a privileged "caste" cut off from the real world.

And while she lacks the flamboyance of Kosciusko-Morizet, her campaign has been smoother than that of her overtly ambitious rival.

"I am a killer," Kosciusko-Morizet said in an interview with NBC News last summer. "Everybody is a killer in politics. Some know how to shoot, some do not. Some do that (shoot) in your face, most of them do that in your back. I do that in the face."

Becoming Paris mayor was a steppingstone to the French presidency for Jacques Chirac, and Kosciusko-Morizet has been accused of using the capital purely as a launchpad.

She denied this, saying that her "only obsession is the battle for Paris".

Her campaign has also been dogged by infighting and has at times been ridiculed.

From a wealthy establishment family, she once described the Paris Metro subway as a "charming place" where people can experience "moments of grace" - comments viewed coming from someone who rarely uses this mode of public transportation, or at least not during rush hour.

As for their actual programs for the French capital, both want to maintain its image as a place of romance and beauty, as well as its economically crucial status as the world's most-visited city, a position increasingly threatened by London.

Kosciusko-Morizet has announced she wants to reduce the number of civil servants in Paris to save 225 million euros ($313 million) by 2020, make the center more pedestrian-friendly and reinforce security.

Hidalgo, meanwhile, has put forward a plan to invest 8.5 billion euros in improvements in housing, transportation and green spaces, with the aim of reversing a middle- and working-class exodus to the suburbs.

In a televised debate at the end of January, the two women came face to face in a fierce duel on issues such as crime, housing, transport and taxes.

Most pundits scored the contest about even, with Kosciusko-Morizet failing to land the knockout punch she is thought to have needed to overturn Hidalgo's lead in the polls.