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Article snippet: TEHRAN — For months now, a black-turbaned cleric from eastern Iran has been campaigning in provincial cities, presenting himself as an anticorruption hero as he rallies support among the poor and the pious in an underdog effort to win the presidency in Friday’s election. While the candidate, Ebrahim Raisi, 56, a hard-liner who made his career in Iran’s judiciary, seems to have come out of nowhere, he is seen as a favorite and possible successor to Iran’s 78-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Winning the presidency, many analysts say, could be a major step in his ascent to that all-powerful position. “When he speaks I hear our leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei,” said Hadi Seifollah, 32, who runs a shop selling prayer mats, religious rings and the white-and-black checkered scarves worn by Iran’s paramilitary basij forces. “Raisi believes first in the Islamic Republic, its ideology,” he added. “He will deal with corruption. Other candidates only talk about the economy.” A recent poll put Mr. Raisi in second place in the race for the presidency, with 27 percent of the projected vote. The same poll, by the Iranian Students Polling Agency, projected that the incumbent president, Hassan Rouhani, will get around 42 percent, depending on the turnout on Friday. On Monday, though, the second-most-popular conservative in the race, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the mayor of Tehran, suspended his campaign and threw his support to Mr. Raisi, possibly raising what an... Link to the full article to read more