Socialists Elect ‘New Way’ Leader

The opposition Socialist Party elected a young politician who has been compared to Britain’s Tony Blair as their new leader, four months after a stinging electoral defeat. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, a congressman from the northern Leon region who has been with the party since he was 19, must now form a leadership group, which will face a vote of approval from the party congress today in Madrid, the capital. Zapatero, 39, heads a so-called New Way group within the Socialist Party, and newspapers have drawn parallels with Blair, who overhauled the British Labor Party to win power in 1997.