<p>Whether they fit in with the older Little Italy stereotype of spaghetti, pizza and amore or the globalized generation of young professionals, Angela Della Costanza Turner believes Italians who live abroad are the best link between the homeland and the world.</p><p>That is why the 37-year-old architect from Genoa, Italy, who has lived in Atlanta for 15 years and is the daughter-in-law of CNN founder Ted Turner, is running in the North and Central America district for the first-ever expatriate seats in the Italian Parliament.</p><p>"If I manage to set foot in Rome, it's with the intent of making all those Italians who talk and talk and talk understand the importance of Italians living abroad," Turner said as she got ready to leave her job as Italy's honorary consul in Atlanta to campaign in a district four times the size of Europe before the April 9-10 elections.</p><p>She has aligned herself with "Forza Italia," the center-right party of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi _ a likely choice for the daughter-in-law of another media mogul.</p><p>"My objective is to try to open the mentality of Italians," Turner said in Italian still accented with the Genoese inflection. "The experience of living abroad is a strong school."</p><p>Turner is one of at least 38 candidates from five parties or coalitions in her district vying for the vote of nearly 350,000 Italians. Together with the other expatriate districts _ Latin America, Europe and the rest of the world _ those elected will fill 18 positions, six in the 315-seat Senate and 12 in the 630-seat Chamber of Deputies.</p><p>The exact list of candidates has not been agreed upon yet, according to Italy's Foreign Ministry, but it is likely to be a bit shorter than the 2-foot-long ballot Italians living in Italy will face.</p><p>Under a 2001 amendment, Italians living abroad will get ballots from their consulates by March 21 and will be allowed to return them via mail.</p><p>While the expatriate parliament members will be able to vote on all bills, presumably following their party lines, it is the role of Italians abroad that they feel most passionate about whatever the candidates' political leanings.</p><p>Turner and other candidates, such as independent Dom Serafini and Silvana Mangione of the center-left coalition led by Berlusconi's opponent Romano Prodi, both from New York, share this premise: Italy's stuffy politics and often byzantine bureaucracy can do with the breath of fresh air they say only Italians abroad can give.</p><p>"Italians abroad have an extra gear, they're used to more open political systems and can make Italy better," said the 56-year-old Serafini in U.S.-accented Italian. Serafini moved to New York City in 1968 and is the director of a business journal.</p><p>So the candidates say they want Italy to be more agile in dealing with expatriates _ from easier ways to maintain citizenship to participation in pension funds and university student exchanges.</p><p>Turner, who did her thesis in urbanist architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology _ better known in the U.S. as Georgia Tech _ wants Italians who have internships abroad to be able to take their college exams via Web cam in the presence of consular officers "so they can stay abroad and don't have to be 90 before they finish college," she said.</p><p>Candidates also want Italian language classes to be more widely available _ with the aim of nearly tripling the number of speakers of "the language of culture and commerce," said Mangione, a 61-year-old public relations consultant whose Italian is still flawless even though she moved to the U.S. in 1974 with her late American husband.</p><p>While most of the candidates are well-known in their Italian-American communities and have been stumping from British Columbia to the Dominican Republic, none has Turner's media clout. Being constantly covered by the media and hanging out with the likes of former U.S. President Bill Clinton has made her unafraid of the spotlight, Turner said.</p><p>"I'm like a tank," she said. "And my husband didn't bat an eyelash" at the prospect of making the 5,000-mile commute between Atlanta and Rome.</p><p>Planning her final campaign stops while her 6-year-old son ate spaghetti in their Atlanta mansion, Turner beamed as she pointed to herself and her assistant, a Roman whose husband teaches at Georgia Tech.</p><p>"We're part of the new image of Italy _ young, dynamic and not molded _ and there're thousands like me," she said. "Every Italian who left must be respected, a restaurant just as much as a consulate, because they represent Italy with passion."</p>
