Team building, practical advice, family photo and speech from the leader: the candidates of the presidential majority for the June legislative elections meet on Tuesday near Paris, while Macronie is about to complete his list of contenders.
These candidates of the common house Together! were invited to the Docks d’Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis) for a day of training, culminating in an intervention by Emmanuel Macron.
The main figures of the macronie must pass a head there, from François Bayrou to Edouard Philippe via a slew of ministers, candidates or not, such as Olivier Véran, Jean-Michel Blanquer, Barbara Pompili, Eric Dupond-Moretti or Clément Beaune.
A family photo in tight rows
The day was opened with a speech by the President of the National Assembly Richard Ferrand, before a family photo in close rows. On the program for this reunion session: workshops on campaign strategy or communication, with key practical questions such as professions of faith or attacks on social networks.
The 505 to have been fixed on their fate, after the publication of several bursts of nominations, are not all present but the organization takes advantage of more than 400 participants.
Some dissidents
On the starting line for the majority, a very large majority of outgoing people, divided between La République en Marche, the MoDem and supporters of Edouard Philippe d’Horizons, while more than thirty deputies of the majority elected in 2017 had indicated that they did not want to re-enlist. Some outgoing non-reinvested could however present themselves as dissidents.
This is the case of the deputy of Hauts-de-Seine Jacques Maire, to whom the spokesperson of LREM Prisca Thévenot was finally preferred. “We don’t understand. (…) Thévenot is parachuted. She does not know anyone, ”according to the entourage of the outgoing.
For a week, the macronie has been proud of taking among former LR opponents in the Assembly: the winter rally Eric Woerth (Oise) followed after the re-election of Emmanuel Macron by Constance Le Grip (Hauts-de -Seine), Robin Reda (Essonne) or Marine Brenier (Alpes-Maritimes).
Nearly 70 names are missing from the lists
Could new rallies create a surprise? If there should logically remain some 70 candidates to invest in order to fill the 577 constituencies, it is a list of 50 to 65 names that the presidential majority must still reveal.
And, paradoxically, it is the unfilled constituencies that will be the most scrutinized because the macronie intends to favor several candidates by not opposing them with any opponent.
Who could be targeted by these outstretched hands? For the moment, the LR Damien Abad in the fifth district of Ain, François Cornut-Gentille (Haute-Marne), Jean-Louis Thiériot (Seine-et-Marne), Nicolas Forissier (Indre), the related LR Jean-Carles Grelier (Sarthe) or the UDI Béatrice Descamps (North) do not know their majority opponent.
Similarly, in the constituency of Le Touquet (Pas-de-Calais) where the Macron couple owns a house, the outgoing Robert Therry will have to suffer competition from the presidential majority, while his mentor and mayor of the seaside town , LR Daniel Fasquelle, has multiplied the signs of rapprochement with the president?
The dubbed socialists
On the left, it is the outgoing socialist candidates David Habib (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) or Dominique Potier (Meurthe-et-Moselle) who could be the subject of Macronist leniency.
Ditto in Sarthe, where Sylvie Tolmont, successor to the figure of the PS Stéphane Le Foll – today destroyer of the agreement between his party and the mélenchonistes – could receive tacit support.
The presidential majority must also still decide on situations modestly recognized as “delicate”, with some of its outgoing people with a damaged image: among others, Stéphane Trompille (Ain) convicted of sexual harassment, the MoDem Michel Fanget (Puy-de- Dôme) convicted at first instance for complicity in fraud, the MoDem Sandrine Josso (Pays-de-Loire), prosecuted by a former collaborator, or the former Secretary of State MoDem Nathalie Elimas (Val-d’Oise), targeted by an investigation for moral harassment.
All have however announced that they intend to present themselves to their own succession.
Barbara Pompili, Minister for the Ecological Transition, could also be the last member of the government to be invested, when she indicated last week that she was still reluctant to represent herself in the Somme. Before her, eighteen members of the government have already been dubbed.