Livable Rotterdam
Livable Rotterdam is a conservative liberal and localist political party in the municipality of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, which was founded by Ronald Sørensen in 2001. The party was founded at the same time as a number of other Leefbaar parties which contested municipal and local elections as alternatives to the main Dutch parties.
History
Livable Rotterdam was founded by teacher, union spokesman and former Labour Party member Ronald Sørensen and his wife. Sørensen said that his main reason for forming the party was that he did not agree with the way things were going in national politics. After registering the party, he contacted Pim Fortuyn, who at the time was in the public spotlight, and asked him to front the party's campaign for the 2002 local election in Rotterdam. Fortuyn had been selected as leader of the national Livable Netherlands party and Livable Rotterdam was initially considered the local counterpart to the LN. However, Fortuyn was later sacked as leader of the LN due to controversial comments he made in an interview and founded his own party, the Pim Fortuyn List. Livable Rotterdam chose to retain Fortuyn as its lead candidate and affiliated itself to the LPF. Livable Rotterdam won the council elections of March 2002 due to the charismatic leadership of Fortuyn and saw him elected along with 17 councilors which included Sørensen and Marco Pastors. This made it the city's largest political party, a position which for the previous thirty years had been held by the Labour Party.The party consists of numerous members that are new to politics and were attracted to Fortuyn's dreams of political change. The party attracts attention and criticism for the upfront behavior of its members and its unconventional, if sometimes right-leaning vision, especially on issues of immigration, crime and inter-culture tolerance.
In the municipal elections of 7 March 2006, Livable Rotterdam lost 5%, dropping to 29.7% of their votes and PvdA gained 15%, making the latter the biggest party again, with 37.4% of the votes. Before the elections, Livable Rotterdam declared it would not enter in a coalition with PvdA and several members even declared that, irrespective of the coalition, they would leave the council if PvdA would become the biggest party.
After the municipal elections of 3 March 2010 the Public Prosecutor in Rotterdam launched an investigation into how proxy votes were solicited by the party, after an e-mail emerged in which one of the party’s councillors gives tips on how to accumulate these. Ronald Buijt wrote that he had 50 reliable citizens of the city who could take the proxy votes to the polling stations. The electoral council said this went against the spirit of proxy voting, which should only be used at the initiative of the voter. This irregularity was added to a litany of complaints against the poll in Rotterdam in these elections, which resulted in a recount of all the votes cast. Back then the PvdA only beat Livable Rotterdam by a mere 650 votes, yet both parties had 14 seats in the city council.
Joost Eerdmans was elected lijsttrekker of Livable Rotterdam on 6 October 2013. Under his leadership, the party won the 2014 municipal election, retaining its fourteen seats. Since 8 May 2014, Livable Rotterdam leads a coalition with CDA and D66.
As of 2022, the party leads a new coalition with VVD, D66 and Denk