Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Walter Veltroni today resigned as mayor of Rome to focus exclusively on his campaign to become Italy's prime minister in the April national election.

Leader of the newly formed Democratic Party, Veltroni, 52, is running for prime minister for the first time against Silvio Berlusconi, 71, who has twice won elections in the past 14 years. Veltroni trails Berlusconi and his allies by almost 10 percentage points in recent opinion polls.

Elections are being held three years ahead of schedule because of the collapse of Prime Minister Romano Prodi's government -- the 61st since World War II -- on Jan. 24 after 20 months in power. Prodi is now caretaker premier and is not running again.

``Veltroni will now be focusing all his energies into cutting Berlusconi's advantage and trying to incorporate as many small parties into his,'' said Antonio Noto, director of Rome- based polling company IPR Marketing, in an interview.

Veltroni so far has modeled his campaign after the U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has a clear lead in the race for Democratic delegates over Hillary Clinton. Veltroni mimics Obama's message of national unity and change, even translating Obama's slogan, ``Yes, we can,'' into Italian, ``Si puo fare.''

Primary Win

The Democratic Party, also modeled on its U.S. counterpart, was formed last year by the union of the two largest partners in Prodi's coalition. Veltroni won an October primary vote to lead the party with almost 76 percent of more than 3 million ballots.

The party was created to build a formation large enough to avoid depending on the myriad small parties that have led to broad, unstable coalition governments. Prodi fell after one of his nine allies defected, wiping out his parliamentary majority. Veltroni has said that he won't run in a coalition with his former allies, asking them to join forces with the Democratic Party to defeat Berlusconi and his allies.

Like French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Veltroni is a professed admirer of the U.S. Veltroni, who started in politics as a communist in the 1970s, cites Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King as political heroes.

He served as deputy premier under Prodi between 1996 and 1998. As mayor of Rome since 2001, he instituted a city-wide festival in the summer and a popular, all-night party called the ``White Night,'' which drew some 2.5 million people last year. The mayor also has an interest in contemporary cinema and started an annual Rome film festival to rival the more established one in Venice.

Veltroni hasn't yet presented the program he would aim to implement if elected. He has said he would focus on trying to lower taxes and boost salaries, while increasing environmental safeguards and improving the welfare system.

An IPR Marketing poll for la Repubblica newspaper showed Berlusconi's coalition had 55.7 percent support, while the Democratic Party and its allies had 44 percent. IPR surveyed 1,000 voters on Jan. 27-28 and the survey had a 3 percentage- point margin of error.

To contact the reporter on this story: Steve Scherer in Rome at scherer@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: February 13, 2008 10:09 EST