Skeletons in Nawrocki’s closet fail to dent his Polish presidential bid

WARSAW — Numerous skeletons have tumbled out of Karol Nawrocki’s closet during Poland’s presidential election campaign, but the increasingly lurid accusations about his past aren’t harming his chances — and may even help the populist right-winger win Sunday’s nail-biter contest.

The political temperature is boiling in the final stretch of the race. Donald Tusk, Poland’s pro-EU center-right prime minister, has accused the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) opposition party of backing Nawrocki’s presidential bid despite knowing of his links to gangsters and prostitution. The candidate himself is also suggesting he took part in pitched battles of football hooligans, playing up his skills as a boxer.  

It’s been a sensational escalation from the somewhat surreal accusations against Nawrocki in the earlier weeks of the campaign. In March it emerged that he had appeared on a TV show in disguise, blurred out and using a pseudonym, to promote a book he had written on organized crime and to praise himself.

Matters took a more serious turn this month when the circumstances of Nawrocki’s acquisition of an apartment from an elderly man in the northern city of Gdańsk ignited a political controversy. But the accusations that he is linked to the underworld — which Nawrocki has adamantly denied as a media fabrication — have ratcheted up the debate over his fitness for the presidency.

Polarized Poles

The big question is whether any of this is moving the needle in Poland’s highly polarized society. Just like his political ally U.S. President Donald Trump, whom he met earlier in the campaign, Nawrocki is proving adept at deflecting the accusations against him as fantasies and lies from the liberal camp.

Nawrocki’s campaign in fact shows no signs of buckling under the accusations, and POLITICO’s Poll of Polls puts the contest on a knife edge, with Nawrocki polling only one percentage point behind his rival, liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski.  

Poland is an important player in the EU and NATO, and the high-stakes election is being closely watched as a signal about the country’s trajectory. A win for Trzaskowski would allow Tusk to steer Warsaw back to the heart of the EU mainstream, whereas Nawrocki as president would be able to scupper much of Tusk’s reformist agenda.  

Nawrocki is drawing parallels between himself and Trump as he hits back against his critics. “Media slander did not destroy President Trump. It will not destroy Karol Nawrocki, either,” he said on his campaign’s X account Wednesday. In addition to meeting Trump, the PiS-backed presidential candidate was also a speaker at MAGA’s CPAC conference in Poland, held Tuesday in the southeastern town of Jasionka.

And just like Trump, Nawrocki has a solid base that is impervious to much of the noise about his past.

“In a deeply polarized society, anything is possible and that is the most fitting answer as to why this is happening,” said Anna Siewierska-Chmaj, a political scientist from the University of Rzeszów.

“These scandals may have actually helped Nawrocki since PiS abandoned the narrative of [his] being a ‘citizens’ candidate’ and closed ranks behind him as a de facto party candidate. This has put the unconvinced PiS voters firmly behind Nawrocki.”

Pulling no punches

Tusk has pulled no punches in combatting Nawrocki, accusing PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński of backing an unsuitable candidate. “You knew about everything, Jarosław. About the connections with the gangsters, about ‘arranging for girls’ … about the apartment fraud and other matters still hidden. The entire responsibility for this catastrophe falls on you!” he wrote on X.

The most serious accusations stem from testimony provided to Polish online portal Onet that Nawrocki had secured prostitutes at a luxury hotel on the Baltic Sea, where he was working for security. A member of parliament from Tusk’s party then appeared on television to vouch for the report. “I have knowledge that all the information presented … in the Onet article is simply true,” said Agnieszka Pomaska, who represents Gdańsk, the city on the Baltic Sea where the alleged offences took place.

Nawrocki emphatically denies the accusations, says he will sue Onet over the report, and is hitting back hard against Tusk and Trzaskowski. “Today in Poland the problem is political prostitution, which wants to give Poland away for foreign money … Media assistants of Tusk and Trzaskowski will not take away our victory!” he wrote on X.

Conversely, when it comes to suggestions he was involved in mass brawls involving as many as 140 football hooligans, far from pushing back Nawrocki has embraced the notion, playing up his pedigree as a boxer and saying he took part in “sporting, noble fights.”

Another allegation emerged in a report by Gazeta Wyborcza, a major liberal newspaper, over Nawrocki’s security clearance — something he needed for his job as the head of the Institute of National Remembrance, a state agency tracking Nazi and Communist crimes against Poles.

The report claimed that Nawrocki’s assessment by the ABW counterintelligence agency was initially negative until the agency’s then-chief — now an aide to outgoing President Andrzej Duda — overrode it.

Nawrocki’s campaign team had no response to the security clearance issue when contacted by POLITICO.

But the election campaign attacks haven’t all been levelled at Nawrocki. PiS has also tried to undermine Trzaskowski, more recently by suggesting he is refusing to undergo drug testing because he has something to hide.

When asked about that claim on Monday, Trzaskowski replied: “I am surprised that you are asking this kind of question, because it is Karol Nawrocki who clearly has a problem. It is like when someone has a car accident — they should examine themselves, not ask others to do it.” 

PiS also said Wednesday that Trzaskowski could be implicated in a complex “garbage scandal” that has festered for years at Warsaw town hall.

Poland’s National Prosecutor’s Office said it had charged 17 people — some close to municipal government in the capital — with corruption involving fake invoices related to the rental of waste management equipment.

Trzaskowski, who has been mayor of Warsaw since 2018, has long denied any role and sued a PiS-linked newspaper over such allegations two years ago.

Tied to Tusk

PiS’s main strategy has been to associate Trzaskowski with Tusk’s government, whose popularity is waning.

An April poll by Opinia24 for private broadcaster Radio Zet showed 51 percent of Poles giving the government a negative assessment less than two years after it took power. Only 39 percent of respondents said they were happy with the Tusk administration.

Monthly surveys gauging the mood in Poland showed supporters of the government at 34 percent of respondents in April, compared to 40 percent opposed.

“In the final stretch of the election campaign … Donald Tusk is making it clear that he wants to install his puppet in the presidential palace,” Andrzej Śliwka, a member of parliament for PiS and an aide to Nawrocki’s campaign, told a press conference Wednesday.

“Rafał Trzaskowski is Donald Tusk’s puppet, and Tusk wants a politician … who will be completely subservient to him. That is why Tusk will stop at nothing.”

Siewierska-Chmaj fears the more feverish the campaign becomes, the greater the risk of an explosive backlash.

“I would say we’re already at a point where this threatens to erupt — even, I would go so far as to say, into acts of violence. The level of polarization and mutual animosity is starting to translate into real aggression, and it’s becoming increasingly clear,” she said.