After the presidential slap, Valérie Pécresse collected some 2.5 million euros in donations

In an attempt to fill the five million hole left by her defeat in the presidential election, former Les Républicains candidate Valérie Pécresse quickly launched an appeal for donations. According to Christian Jacob, president of the party, 2.5 million donations were collected.

The “Précressethon” is halfway there. “About 2.5 million donations” were collected by Valérie Pécresse, welcomes the president of the Les Républicains (LR) party this Sunday at the microphone of RTL. A sum that should help fill the five million hole left by the defeat of former presidential candidate LR. “The party will bring eight million euros for a campaign that had cost 15 million”insists Christian Jacob, while considering that this call for donations had been “understood by many French people”.

Pressed for time, Valérie Pécresse had launched a first appeal for donations the day after the first round of the presidential election, on April 11, “to all those who [lui] gave their vote, but also to all those who preferred yesterday [dimanche] the useful vote, and finally to all French people who are attached to political pluralism and freedom of expression”. An appeal relaunched this week in the same spirit, Valérie Pécresse this time invoking “those who share [ses] convictions” but also those who “for fear of the extremes have chosen the useful vote from the first round”.

The candidate with the largest wealth

According to data published in early March by the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP), the heritage of the former candidate LR amounted to 9.7 million euros at the start of the campaign. In addition to three houses worth just over 4 million euros, she had notably declared nearly 6.5 million euros in life insurance, retirement savings plan, stock options, shares, current accounts and various savings products shared with her husband Jérôme Pécresse, an executive at General Electric. Enough to make Valérie Pécresse the most richly endowed candidate in this election, as we wrote the day after the first round. Christian Jacob returned to this aspect on Sunday, explaining that stock options constituting “her husband’s retirement” are included in this heritage.

In the first round of the presidential election, Valérie Pécresse won only 4.78% of the vote. A figure below the 5% necessary to obtain reimbursement of her campaign expenses, for which she claims to have “Personally indebted to the tune of five million euros”. And this defeat hurts all the more because it is historic: this is the worst score for the right in a national ballot under the Fifth Republic.