Romania holds a presidential election Sunday that could narrow to nationalist and leftist candidates

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — At the campaign headquarters of his far-right nationalist party in Romania's capital, George Simion hailed Donald Trump’s reelection days before he runs in his own country's presidential race. He also denied allegations that he is a Russian spy.

“I would like for Romanians to feel that the leaders are rule-makers, not simply rule-takers,” the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians leader told reporters Wednesday in Bucharest. Formed in 2019, the party known by its initials AUR proclaims to stand for “family, nation, faith, and freedom.”

The 38-year-old candidate, who is banned from entering Moldova and Ukraine over security concerns, strongly denied "all the allegations regarding any kind of connections with the Russian intelligence officers.”

Sunday’s presidential election has 13 candidates and is expected to go to a Dec. 8 runoff, potentially pitting Simion against Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, who is backed by Romania's largest party, the Social Democratic Party, or PSD.

The European Union and NATO member country will also hold parliamentary elections Dec. 1 that will determine Romania's next government and prime minister. The presidential role carries a five-year term and has significant decision-making powers in areas such as national security and foreign policy.

Ciolacu told The Associated Press he has a “clear plan for a more developed Romania that leaves no one behind, an internal plan based on economic growth on investments and a plan for a more respected and influential Romania abroad.”

“Unfortunately, we have political leaders who challenge our presence in the EU and NATO … I believe that extremists must be politically isolated and not taken into account by any government,” the PSD leader added.

Besides Ciolacu and Simion, other key candidates are Elena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union party, former NATO deputy general secretary Mircea Geoana, who is running independently, and Nicolae Ciuca, a former army general and prime minister of the center-right National Liberal Party, which is currently in a tense coalition with the PSD.

Claudiu Tufis, an associate professor of political science at the University of Bucharest, said polling data ahead of the race were unreliable, because “there’s a lot of attempts to generate a particular outcome.”

“All that I can say for sure is that it’s probably going to be a fight between Simion and Lasconi," Tufis said. "I think it depends on the mobilization both within Romania and outside Romania.”

Some voters feel that none of the candidates in Sunday’s race is addressing issues they view as significant.

“I think we are in a situation where an economic and social crisis is more and more present in our lives,” said Catrinel Toncu, a 24-year-old anthropology student. “I don’t see any discussion on upcoming systemic changes. ... Each of them is problematic, in my opinion.”

Simion has long been a figure of controversy. He campaigned for reunification with Moldova, which this year renewed a five-year ban on him entering the country. In 2020, the AUR party went from relative obscurity to gaining 9% in a parliamentary vote, allowing it to enter parliament.

Opponents have accused Simion and AUR of being extremist. In 2022, Israel’s ambassador to Romania condemned AUR for opposing a mandate for studying the Holocaust in Romania, which it deemed a “minor issue.” The party opposes same-sex marriage and has close ties to the Romanian Orthodox Church.

At his party's campaign headquarters, Simion called Russian President Vladimir Putin “a war criminal” and said Western sanctions against Russia “were not enough.” But he also said he opposes Romania — which has sent a Patriot missile system to Ukraine — contributing further military aid to its war-torn neighbor.

“I am not a fan of continuing the war, and I hope that President-elect Trump will stop this war," he said.

Tufis said Trump’s reelection could bolster support for Simion, who has praised him. “Trump is a disruptor, and Simion to some extent can be thought of in this way — as disruptors of the political system,” he said.

After Russia fully invaded Ukraine in 2022, Romania has played an increasingly prominent role in NATO, including opening a training hub for F-16 jet pilots from allied countries and other partners, including Ukraine.

Geoana, a former foreign minister and ambassador to the United States, told the AP that he believes his international experience qualifies him above the other candidates.

“I think the political establishment in Romania is lagging behind Romanian society,” he said. “We are a big country, we are strategically immensely relevant for all our partners and allies, but Romania should become a truly multi-regional player and power.”

The former NATO official also acknowledged the rise of populism, saying that people who vote “for such extreme solutions are the ones who were basically abandoned by the Romanian state and by the current political establishment, the ones in the small cities in Romania, the ones in the countryside.”

Presidential hopeful Lasconi, a former journalist and the leader of USR, told the AP she wants to "get rid of this label of us being a corrupt and poor country.” She also vowed to prioritize pushing for Romania’s full accession to the Schengen area, Europe’s ID-check-free travel zone.

“In all of the state institutions, the politicians, corruption is the biggest problem we are facing,” she said. “A few dozen of politicians that keep coming back ... who try to fill their pockets as much as possible, but do nothing for the people."

One of the main conditions of Romania’s accession to the EU in 2007 was that it cracked down on endemic corruption. But it remains one of the bloc’s most corrupt members, according to Transparency International.

Lasconi said she favors increasing defense spending and that supporting Ukraine “to win the war” is essential. “Putin is not afraid of NATO. He is afraid of freedom. Freedom, democracy, and the rule of law are contagious,” she said. “The moment you have at your borders states where democracy works, many Russians might ask themselves questions.”

Eugen Ionescu, a 40-year-old restaurant owner, says he will be pushed to vote for a “lesser evil” in the anticipated runoff. “That’s the situation in this country for 20 years, we have to choose the lesser evil … we’re not going to vote for someone because we believe in the person.”

If Simion wins, however, he fears that “all the little stability that we have at this moment as a country will be gone.”

A banner that reads "Romania My Love" is placed above a religious icon at the campaign headquarters of former NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana, who is running as an independent candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections, during an interview with the Associated Press in Bucharest, Romania, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu addresses delegates at the congress of the Social Democratic Party or PSD, which nominated him as the party's candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

Former NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana, who is running as an independent candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections, speaks during an interview with the Associated Press at his campaign headquarters in Bucharest, Romania, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

George Simion, the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians or AUR candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections, attends a press conference with international media in Bucharest, Romania, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

Former NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana, who runs as an independent candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections, waits outside his campaign headquarters in Bucharest, Romania, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

A woman sits on a chair outside the electoral campaign headquarters of George Simion, the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections, in Bucharest, Romania, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu addresses delegates at the congress of the Social Democratic Party or PSD, which nominated him as the party's candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

Elena Lasconi, the Save Romania Union or USR, party candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections, gestures at an event for launching the party's program in Bucharest, Romania, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

George Simion, the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians or AUR candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections, gestures during a press conference with international media in Bucharest, Romania, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

Former NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana, who runs as an independent candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections, speaks during an interview with the Associated Press at his campaign headquarters in Bucharest, Romania, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

Elena Lasconi, the Save Romania Union or USR, party candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections, greets supporters at an event for launching the party's program in Bucharest, Romania, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

A large poster of Nicolae Ciuca, the National Liberal Party or PNL candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections, peers from behind trees in Bucharest, Romania, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Nicolae Ciuca, the National Liberal Party or PNL candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections, attends an event launching his presidential program in Bucharest, Romania, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

An electoral poster of Elena Lasconi, the Save Romania Union or USR, party candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections, is placed on a fire damaged building in Farcasesti Mosneni, Romania, Friday, Oct. 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Elena Lasconi, the Save Romania Union or USR, party candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections speaks during an interview with the Associated Press in Bucharest, Romania, Friday, Nov. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

People wallk outside the electoral campaign headquarters of George Simion, the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians or AUR candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections, in Bucharest, Romania, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

George Simion, the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians or AUR candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections, gestures during a press conference in Bucharest, Romania, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

A man installs a large poster of Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, the Social Democratic Party or PSD candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections, in Bucharest, Romania, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu attends the congress of the Social Democratic Party or PSD, which nominated him as the party's candidate in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

People walk by posters showing candidates in the upcoming Nov. 24 presidential elections, in Bucharest, Romania, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

Harvard University professor Robert Coles, the psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who championed the cause of children grappling with poverty and segregation, has died at 97, his son said Sunday.

The son, also named Robert Coles, told The Associated Press that his father died Thursday at a hospice center in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

The elder Coles was famed for documenting the needs of children, particularly those caught in the crucible of social upheaval. The second and third parts of his five-volume "Children of Crisis" won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for general nonfiction.

In a 1965 Washington Post essay, he wrote that, expecting to find many psychiatric problems among the children of poverty, that instead "I was constantly surprised at the endurance shown by children we would all call poor or, in the current fashion, 'culturally disadvantaged.'"

"What enabled such children from such families to survive emotionally and educationally ordeals I feel sure many white middle-class boys and girls would find impossible?"

He would visit the same families repeatedly in order to get to know them well, and brought along crayons to allow the children he studied to draw pictures about their experiences and perceptions.

He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. He also was one of the first recipients of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant." In 1999, a panel of judges ranked "Children of Crisis" as No. 44 on its list of the century's 100 best English-language works of nonfiction.

The "Children of Crisis" books came out from 1967 to 1978. His first book focused on the effects of desegregation on children. The second looked at life among migrant workers, sharecroppers and others dwelling in mountain areas.

He subtitled the third volume "The South Goes North" as it focused on both Black and white Southerners who moved into urban areas in the North. The fourth looked at children of Native American origin, as well as Alaska Natives and Hispanic children. A fifth volume examined children of wealth and privilege.

His other books included "Their Eyes Meeting the World," exploring the meanings of children's drawings; "The Moral Life of Children," "The Political Life of Children" and "The Spiritual Life of Children." He also wrote books on psychoanalyst Anna Freud and reformer Dorothy Day.

While many of his books probed conditions in the United States, he also studied children around the world. In all, he wrote more than 50 books and hundreds of articles and essays.

Some of his peers found his work to be more that of a reporter and advocate than that of a psychiatrist or scientist.

"He's a very good journalist who talks to kids sensitively and tells stories well," the late Harvard professor Lawrence Kohlberg, a leading authority on moral development, told AP in 1986. "But no psychiatrist would take what he says seriously."

He had gotten interested in children's reaction to crises in the early 1960s while serving in the South as an Air Force doctor. He was particularly taken by Ruby Bridges, who was only 6 when she became the center of a storm of abuse as the first Black child in a previously all-white school in New Orleans.

"She demonstrated moral stamina; she possessed honor, courage," he said in 1986. He even wrote a children's book about her, "The Story of Ruby Bridges," in 1995. (Ruby's heroism also caught the eye of artist Norman Rockwell, who depicted her brave entrance into the school in his 1964 work "The Problem We All Live With.")

Coles' wife, Jane, helped out during the interviews with children.

"At first the children were frightened to death of us — they'd never had white people in their homes before," Coles told People magazine. "But I began to throw away my questions. I threw away my necktie. I began to sit on the floor."

The 1995 PBS documentary "Listening to Children: A Moral Journey with Robert Coles" showed him at work, interviewing a cross-section of American children and analyzing their drawings, as he had done in his books.

"A child is an opportunity and a moral challenge. How are we going to do justice to this new life with all its possibilities?" he said. "If we fail as parents, we are failing also as citizens."

Coles held a longtime appointment as a research psychiatrist at Harvard's University Health Services. In 1977, he was named professor of psychiatry and medical humanities, and in 1995, he was appointed as a professor of social ethics in the School of Education.

In a popular Harvard class he taught called the Literature of Social Reflection — jokingly called "Guilt 105" — he stressed that "we should look inward and think about the meaning of our life and its purposes," he told People magazine in 1990.

Born in Boston, Coles went on to graduate from Harvard in 1950. He received a medical degree from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1954. A 1972 Time magazine cover profile said he became interested in psychiatry as "the most philosophical of the disciplines" — and besides, he found he was unnerved when children cried when being vaccinated.

He acknowledged that he and his own family lived well, telling The New York Times in 1997, "It makes me uncomfortable, seeing the disparities between the world I document and the world I inhabit."

His wife died in 1993. They had three sons.

FILE - President Bush, left, shakes hands with Robert Coles, center, a child psychologist, researcher and professor of psychiatry from Cambridge, Mass., as first lady Laura Bush looks on during the National Endowment for the Arts Awards ceremony at Constitution Hall, April 22, 2002, in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)