Election Special: Daniel Sazonov wants to be the new Mayor of Helsinki

Daniel Sazonov already has a job at City Hall, and now he’s looking for a promotion.

The second term National Coalition Party councillor currently serves as the capital’s Deputy Mayor with responsibility for health care, social services and the rescue department: but in this month’s municipal elections he’s running to be mayor.

“Helsinki is a growing city, a competitive city and economically we have managed pretty well,” he tells Finland Insider, setting out his elevator pitch.

“The basic elements are in good shape but we should look at where there is room for improvement. It’s about well-functioning everyday life, it’s good schools and healthcare and economical development.”

When Finland goes to the polls in municipal elections on Sunday 13 April, Helsinki will see a changing of the guard in a system where you can’t vote directly for the mayor, but where each party nominates their mayoral candidates in advance, and voters cast their ballot knowing the largest single party will be able to install their candidate in City Hall.

Since this system was first introduced in 2017 the National Coalition Party has held the mayoral office for two election cycles, with first Jan Vapaavuori and then incumbent Juhana Vartiainen in the top job. Vartiainen is not running for a second term.

This year, Kokoomus is hoping their 32-year-old hometown candidate Daniel Sazonov will win them a ‘three-peat’.

“Politics in Helsinki means that we can agree to disagree, but in most topics we can find a common ground. And that’s why I love city politics! It’s about taking care of people’s everyday affairs, how their everyday lives are run and how they can live in a safe city. It’s a lot less about identity politics,” he says.

Those identity politics hit the headlines earlier this year when some critics and media outlets tried to smear Sazonov - an Ingrian Finn whose parents relocated to Helsinki some months before the collapse of the Soviet Union - as somehow not being Finnish enough.

It’s a ridiculous charge he rightly refutes, and his campaign points out he was born in Finland, and experienced all of his significant life moments in Helsinki: from his first day at primary school to his first kiss; from his first beer to doing military service.

“For me the most important thing is that my political agenda has always been clear. I am pro-Ukraine, pro-NATO and I was demanding sanctions on Russia directly after the annexation of Crimea [in 2014]. My opinions and political agenda have not changed in the ten years I’ve been in politics,” he says.

Questioning someone’s ethnic background, Sazonov adds, “is something that should not be part of election discussions in 2025 in Helsinki. Our message should be that moving to Finland and being a Finnish citizen you don’t have to answer the question about where your loyalties are.”

Helsinki’s green spaces

One of the most pressing debates in city politics is about the pressure on green spaces versus urban areas; should there be more public transport or more judicious use of personal cars; and whether a growing city can still be a green city.

Sazonov concedes that it’s a trade-off: that Helsinki residents “don’t own cars for the fun of it,” but rather need them for everyday life like shopping or taking their children to different activities.

“But our goal is to get as many cars using underground tunnels and those kind of policy measures which enables us to give more space to walkable cities,” he explains.

“Helsinki has all the possibilities to succeed as a green city and we are one of the most green capitals in Europe, if not the most. We have plenty of nature and in the past year we have created a significant number of nature protection zones.

“If you look at the traffic side we have the chance to combine bike lanes with a walkable city centre without pushing out cars, or make policies where Helsinki residents can’t use their own cars. Some parties want measures which only aim to push cars out of the city,” Sazonov notes.

Finding room for a growing city

In the past year Helsinki has expanded by 10,000 people - one of the biggest increases in decades and Daniel Sazonov notes that the increase in the capital’s population is the equivalent of the size of the average Finnish municipality.

“This keeps the pressure on. We have to build enough homes. We have achieved ambitious goals to build almost 8000 homes in 2022-2023 but now in the economic situation it’s a bit under 3000 homes that the city and private companies together started to build last year. That’s something we really have to work with the next mandate period, that we start building the number of homes we need.”

Sazonov highlights the difficult balance between building brand new neighbourhoods and ensuring people have access to nature and advocates building on reclaimed industrial land in neighbourhoods like Kalasatama, Pasila or Hernessari with higher-density properties, but also says single-family homes are also needed and that there’s “not just one silver bullet, one answer.”

Does national popularity impact Helsinki’s elections? 

A recent poll from public broadcaster Yle puts Sazonov as the fourth most popular choice to be the Mayor of Helsinki with 14% support. At a national level, his Kokoomus party is trailing behind the Social Democrats and their four-party right-wing coalition government has less than 50% support.

So can the national woes of Kokoomus have an impact on the Helsinki municipal elections? Sazonov says “there can be some effect” but stresses he's been running his campaign for six months now and the issues which are important to voters nationally - like international relations, the economy or security policy - are perhaps different at a local level where people want to talk about schools, traffic, the price of housing or some hyper-local issues like sports facilities.

“In the times when global security politics is in turbulence, perhaps that underlines why in municipal elections people want to concentrate on the more local topics which affect them very directly,” he says.

Making Helsinki welcoming for foreigners 

Nationally, the right-wing government has been accused of fomenting a ‘hostile environment’ for foreigners: putting more restrictions on students bringing their families; cutting short the amount of time foreigners have to find a job at the end of their degree programmes before they have to leave the country; adding more years and barriers on to attaining permanent residency and citizenship, among other policy initiatives that have drawn fire from Finland’s international residents.

Sazonov stresses that he has always worked to support the goal of Helsinki as being “extremely international and welcoming”, and says this election cycle “has not changed that goal or attitude.”

Indeed, Sazonov has broken ranks with the national government over immigration policy in the past by saying that Helsinki would continue to fund clinics that treat paperless migrants, while the social and healthcare ministry - run by the far-right anti-immigrant Finns Party - wanted to stop providing healthcare for people who could not prove they were in the country legally.

“The main political parties in Helsinki understand that this is a diverse city and are willing to work with that. I’m happy that Kokoomus has candidates and voters from different backgrounds. I published my mayoral programme also in Ehglish so it is more accessible to more voter groups,” he explains.

“I hope that when I become mayor, the deputy mayors are even more active moving around the city in different events, meeting different communities and having an open discussion about city politics.”