Fersehteh Street, which runs though a leafy neighborhood in northern Tehran, was crowded on Wednesday with young people plastering their cars with stickers promoting Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani for President of Iran. ‘‘Candidates are not chanting ideological slogans anymore,’’ Sahar Namazikhah, wrote recently in the daily newspaper Shargh. “It seems they have no choice but to adapt themselves to the electorate who seems to have a new taste,’’ he said. The day was hot, and the sun was high over streets of the capital city that were choked with traffic as Mahbod Naderi (22), and five of his friends stood in a storefront in the center of the city discussing politics. ‘‘Open-minded people didn’t want to vote,” he said. “Now if they vote, they at least show who they want to win.” The campaign has been defined by candidates who tried to present themselves as agents of change. Chief among them was Rafsanjani, who was president from 1989 to 1997. “Respect for private space,” one of Rafsanjani’s campaign themes, is clearly aimed at the young, who have bristled under the social restrictions imposed by the conservative rulers. Polls showed former police chief Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf as running second. Qalibaf’s campaign created a buzz because the former hardliner posed for a campaign poster that looked more like an advertisement for a movie star than for a hardliner. “The candidates we vote for should be aggressive with reforms, all reforms, political, economic and cultural,” said Mehdi Bahrami (21), who said he planned to vote for Moin. Leading the conservative camp is Ali Larijani, whose slogan was “fresh air”, which he drew from a well-known poem written by a secular poet, and he talked about helping Iranians develop a new identity. —NYT Candidates for the election
