Yordanka Fandukova has 17 rivals in the race to be elected mayor of Sofia on November 15 2009, but is widely seen as impossible to beat – making all the more interesting statements made by her interviews timed to coincide with the opening of her campaign.
 
Fandukova is the candidate nominated by GERB, the party of Boiko Borissov, who created the vacancy for mayor of Sofia when he became Bulgaria’s Prime Minister on July 27. Her candidacy is backed by the two parties in the centre-right Blue Coalition, the Union of Democratic Forces and Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria, as well as Volen Siderov’s ultra-nationalist party Ataka.
 
Speaking to Bulgarian news agency BTA, in an interview published on October 21, the day after the official launch of her campaign, Fandukova said that she would focus on building a strong team, would put a strong effort into trying to attract European Union funding to Sofia and would not increase local taxes.
 
The candidate, currently Education Minister and formerly Borissov’s deputy mayor with the education portfolio, said that Sofia’s worst problems would be her priorities: traffic, public transport, street repairs and stray dogs.
 
In a separate interview, with Bulgarian-language mass-circulation daily 24 Chassa, Fandukova said that the programme that had been started when Borissov became mayor should be seen through to the end.
 
This required a person with work in City Hall, who had been part of the team and who was well-placed to motivate colleagues at the municipality. She pledged "rigorous control" in managing the city.
 
Her nearest rival, expected to place a distant second according to opinion surveys, is the Bulgarian Socialist Party’s Georgi Kadiev.
 
The other candidates, as announced by Sofia’s Municipal Electoral Commission and reported by Bulgarian news agency Focus, are Valentin Simeonov Simov (The Greens); Siyka Chudomirova Naidenova (Bulgarian Workers’ Socialist Party); Hristo Ivanov Atanasov (Libertas – Bulgaria); Tatyana Stoyanova Papazova (Bulgarian Workers’ Party (communists)); Pavel Ivanov Popov (Order, Law and Justice); Kristiyan Borisov Krastev (Bulgarian Business Bloc); Emil Evgeniev Antonov (Bulgarian National Radical Party); Maya Lyubenova Grazdanova (Socialist Youths’ Union); Anton Dimitrov Genov (Bulgarian Democratic Community); Teodor Danailov Dechev (initiative committee); Georgi Venkov Zhekov (initiative committee); Ventsislav Bozhilov Karpachev (Bulgarian Workers’ Rural Party); Viktoria Petrova Daneva (Bulgarian Communist Party); Iliya Todorov Bozhinov (The Bulgarian Left); Sava Penchev Garbuzanov (United Party of Pensioners in Bulgaria) and Ivan Zhivkov Antikadzhiev (Union of Free Democrats).

Some parties are notably absent in fielding candidates. The Bulgarian Socialist Party's erstwhile partners in the national government coalition that ran the country from 2005 until Borissov's victory in 2009, Simeon Saxe-Coburg's National Movement for Stability and Progress and Ahmed Dogan's Movement for Rights and Freedoms, did not name Sofia mayoral candidates.