He was elected mayor of Paris in 1977, a position he held for 18 years. The founder and leader of the right-wing RPR (Rally for the Republic) Party, Chirac headed the right’s coalition in the National Assembly during the socialist government of 1981–86. When his coalition was victorious in the 1986 National Assembly elections, he was appointed Prime Minister by the socialist President François Mitterrand. After an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1988, Chirac was elected to succeed Mitterrand in 1995 and re-elected with a landslide in 2002, but he did not contest the 2007 election. In 2011 he was convicted of corruption while mayor of Paris.