(Paris) Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe is locked in a tight race against Segolene Royal to lead the Socialists into the next presidential election against Nicolas Sarkozy.

The party has been in disarray since Royal, a Socialist member of Parliament, was beaten by Sarkozy for the presidency in May 2007. The party has so far failed to mount an effective opposition.

Delanoe, who is openly gay, and Royal, who is gay-positive, are among eight candidates seeking the Socialist Party nod to run against Sakozy in 2012.

This week the party has been meeting to adopt a platform. Each of the candidates has proposed their own manifesto. The winning platform will give its candidate a clear advantage for the leadership.

In an initial vote, Royal came out on top, about 29 percent ahead of Delanoe, who was second. A final vote is expected on the weekend and the party will meet in November to chose a candidate for the presidency..

Delanoe’s platform calls for a “decidedly reformist left, that is pro-European, pro-environment and efficient.” Royal seeks to move the party closer to the middle.

In the last presidential election, conservative Sarkozy claimed the middle ground – a move credited with helping him win.

In March, Delanoe romped to an easy re-election as Paris mayor.

If he were to win the presidency, it would make Delanoe the first openly gay man in modern times to lead a major power.

In 1998, while he was a relatively obscure city councilor, Delanoe came out in a television interview, breaking an unwritten French law that a politician’s private life should remain private.

He later said that friends urged him not to go public, but that he overruled them because of the good he felt it would do to advance gay rights. “Would not my intervention help, even if only in a small way, to lighten the burden of secrecy borne by so many people?” he wrote in his 2004 biography.

In 2001, Delanoe was elected the capital’s first ever Socialist mayor and the first gay person to head a city government in a major city.

A year later, Delanoe was stabbed by a deranged homophobe as he presided over an all-night cultural party at city hall.

He was rushed to the hospital, suffering a single stab wound to his abdomen. Doctors at Pitie-Salpetriere hospital operated on Delanoe for more than three hours. He would spend nearly a month in the hospital.

Police arrested a man at the scene. During interrogations, he told investigators he hated gays and politicians.

Since becoming mayor, Delanoe has been hugely popular, particularly with the poor and middle classes.

But his popularity also is high outside Paris -  and a growing number in the Socialist Party see him as their strongest hope for defeating Sarkozy.

Last year when she ran against Sarkozy, Royal said that if her party formed the next government she would introduce a gay marriage bill.

“Opening up marriage to same-sex couples is needed in the name of equality, visibility and respect,” Royal told gay publication Tetu.