The paternal branch of her family originated from the hamlet of Vaglie in the comune of Ligonchio and she is a distant cousin through her paternal grandfather of the singer Iva Zanicchi. Her family was left-wing but her parents moved their vote to the Northern League in the 1990s. She graduated at classical high school and she later enrolled at Law School at the University of Pisa, where she began her political activity as student representative. She took all the exams but never graduated.
Political career
Cascina
She was elected at the municipal council of Cascina in 2011 and she participated as a regular guest in the political talk showAnnouno on the national channel LA7. In 2015 she was a candidate at the Tuscan regional election but did not get a council seat. In 2016 she obtained at the Cascina mayoral election 28.4% in the first round and 50.3% in the run-off, while her party got 21.3%. Immigration was a core topic of the campaign. At the time her victory interrupted 70 years of leftwing local leadership and Cascina became the first large municipality won by Lega Nord Toscana in the region and the second in general after Bagni di Lucca in the 1990s. in a region which is a traditional left stronghold. She was also the only member of Lega Nord elected mayor in the whole region before Siena, Pisa and Massa followed suit in the June 2018 local elections. The result was not considered local and was seen as a key example of the political shift fuelled by the topic of immigration which later occurred at the national general election in 2018.
Role in Tuscany
Susanna Ceccardi's role was considered crucial for the elections in the local constitutencies of her assessors Edoardo Ziello and Rosellina Sbrana in March 2018 to the Italian Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, respectively, and for the victory of the right-wing candidate Michele Conti at the mayoral election in the bigger neighboring comune of Pisa few months later. In Autumn 2018 she was appointed special commissioner of the party in Tuscany. .
Growing national role and European Elections
In September 2018 she joined the staff of Salvini once he had become the Italian Minister of the Interior. In April 2019, she became an official candidate for her party at the 2019 European Parliament election She was elected with preferences. becoming the youngest MEP of her party. Her former deputy Dario Rollo became mayor after she accepted her role of MEP.
Expedition in Spain during COVID-19 pandemics
During the 2019-20 COVID-19 pandemic she organized with party colleagues Gian Marco Centinaio and Gianna Gambaccini a "rescue expedition" traveling by bus from Italy to Barcelona where they collected 46 Italian citizens blocked in the Canary Islands with no direct flight to Italy because of the increasing local travel restrictions and reduction of flights and routes. The tourists were visited by Gambaccini before the start of the travel, and equipped with protective masks. Ceccardi stated she undertook the initiative after not receiving specific reply from the Italian authorities. The Italian Minister of Foreign AffairsLuigi Di Maio later asked the rescue mission to be stopped when the bus was already in France. The initiative was criticized by the left parties as unnecessary, but also by other local politicians of Fratelli d'Italia.
2020 Tuscan regional elections
After the good performance of the possible allied parties at the 2019 European elections, Ceccardi declared herself as a possible candidate for the president of Tuscany at the incoming regional elections of 2020. However, possible allies criticized the weak performance of the center-right coalition at the runoff votings of the 2019 municipal elections under her strategical leadership and criticisms of her activism emerged also inside her own party. In March 2020 Ceccardi was proposed as candidate for the center-right coalition to the 2020 Tuscan regional election. The candidature was formalized for the whole center-right coalition in June 2020, when the date of the election was confirmed after the COVID-19 lockdown.
Political views
She has been described as an example of younger Italian politicians supporting a more critical view of the European Union especially compared with the older right-wing officeholders of the previous decades. In 2016 she gave honorary citizenship to Magdi Cristiano Allam, a former Muslim who converted to Christianity and is noted for his criticism of Islamic extremism. She opposes the construction of mosques and, in exchange for the celebration of the Eid al-Fitr in a public space by the local Senegalese community, she required that they "firmly condemned" all acts of violence induced by Islamic fundamentalism. Ceccardi consider that "regulating immigration is a moderate position" In April 2019, during Liberation Day, she expressed her critical views about the less debated aspects of the Italian resistance movement.
Personal life
In March 2019 she made public that she is expecting a baby with her partner Andrea Barabotti from Massa , due in September 2019. She expressed the possibility to name her future daughter Kinzica after Kinzica de' Sismondi, a medieval heroine who according to the legend it is said to have defended the town of Pisa from the invasion of the Saracens. Kinzika was born in Pisa on September, 28th She is friend of Andrea Bocelli.
