Rachida Dati tries to recover the Paris Mayor’s Office for the French right with the support of Macron after leaving the Government

It also has the support of the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macronwho signed her to the Ministry of Culture in 2024 in an attempt to extend her power to the right. In exchange, he promised to support her in this new assault on the mayor’s office in the capital, the objective of this daughter of Maghreb immigrants who, for many, embodies the chic Parisian.

Dati’s time at the Ministry of Culture has given him media exposure in the absence of tangible results at a time of budget restrictions.

Macron received her this week in a hearing of more than an hour and allowed her to announce her departure from the Government. It was official on Thursday as part of a Cabinet reshuffle that included four more portfolio changes.

On Thursday Macron replaced Dati with his Culture Minister, Catherine Pégard71 years old, former president of the Palace of Versailles from 2011 to 2024. Former political journalist, counselor of Nicolas Sarkozy in the Elysée, discreet and effective. “I am a Norman cow that watches the trains go by,” she said of herself.

He has the challenge of pacifying the Louvre and the thorny reform of public audiovisual media, a dossier that Dati has not been able to bring to a successful conclusion.

Dati has survived four prime ministers in Culture, Gabriel Attal, Michel Barnier, François Bayrou y Sébastien Lecornu. Indestructible and feared by her rivals and colleagues in the presidential majority, she is famous for her threatening SMS such as the one she sent to Attal: “I will turn your dog into a kebab.”

His popularity is immune to scandals. She will be tried in September for influence peddling and passive corruption after receiving 900,000 euros from Renault’s Dutch subsidiary at the time of Carlos Ghosna fugitive from Japanese justice.

In addition, it has been pointed out by a journalistic investigation by the left-wing weekly New Obs for receiving 300,000 euros from the energy company GDF Suez for presenting amendments and questions favorable to the company in the European Parliament.

Liberation revealed that he had failed to declare his jewelry (valued at 420,000 euros) before the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life.

Despite everything, its pull among Parisians remains.

The left, united

Mayor of district VII, she could collect 30% of the votes in the first round to be held on March 15. Only the socialist candidate would surpass it Emmanuel Grégoire to which the environmentalists, the Communist Party and Plaza Pública endorse their support, formation of the critical socialist Raphael Glucksman.

The unity of the non-extremist left is new in these elections. Normally, this pact occurred after the first round that measured the strength of each group before the merger of lists was negotiated for the second round.

Right now, this puts Grégoire’s list in the lead with 32% of the vote, according to an Ifop poll for l’Opinion held between February 16 and 19.

Lists that exceed 10% of the votes in the first round can be maintained a week later.

In the aforementioned Paris survey there are three. In third position with 12% is Pierre Yves Bournazelcandidate of Renacimiento —Attal’s formation— and Horizontes —the party of Édouard Philippeanother former Macron prime minister.

These two leaders of the presidential majority have distanced themselves from the President of the Republic and put Dati and Macron’s move at risk.

Bournazel swears and swears these days that he does not plan to give up in the second round. It proposes a third way between “the right of backwards” (Dati) and “the left of failure” (Grégoire), between the “every car” of the candidate and the “every bike” of the continuator of the outgoing green policy. Anne Hidalgo.

Bournazel wants to create 80,000 free underground parking spaces for residents and workers financed with the billion he hopes to obtain by selling the Parc des Princes to Paris Saint Germain, the Qatari team he trains. Luis Enrique.

Bournazel has compiled his program in a book The Battle for Paris in which he reveals his admiration for his Gaullist grandfather and his arrival to Paris from his native Cantal “to live better as a homosexual.”

Between 2007 and 2009 he was press advisor to Dati, Minister of Justice with Sarkozy in the Elysée. Since then their personal relationship has gone from bad to worse. He considers her “his best enemy”, a “narcissistic drunk person.” Dati’s troops refer to him as “the socialists’ useful fool.”

To complicate the game, the polls give two extremist candidates a chance of qualifying for the second round: Sophia Chikirouwhich represents the extreme left of La Francia Insumisa—the party of Jean Luc Mélenchon—, y Sarah KnafoMEP of the extreme right and candidate of Reconquista, the party of the rival of Marine Le Pen who directs the ultra-controversial Eric ZemmourKnafo’s lover.

Both appear in the Ifop survey with 11% of votes.

Despite being at the ideological opposite of the mayor of New York, the Muslim Democrat Zohran Mamdaniis the prototype of the Knafo campaign, aimed at young audiences through social networks.

He also settles a rivalry with Le Pen’s official far-right candidate, Thierry Marianiwhich does not exceed 4%, proving once again that Paris is a terrain refractory to Le Pen.

Chikirou has proven to be a unsubmissive of pure strain. Ideologically, he maintains that “China is not a dictatorship but a dominant party system” and that France “cannot give China lessons on freedom of expression.”

The author of homophobic SMS, she is accused of aggravated fraud in the case of Mélenchon’s campaign accounts in the 2017 presidential elections.

A quarter of a century of PS

These are the protagonists of the battle for Paris, a city that could not elect its mayor until 1977 when it won Jacques Chirac.

The Gaullist did not leave the Hotel de Ville until 1995 when he was elected President of the Republic. His successor, Jean Tiberiinherited Chirac’s corruption but not his charisma and gave way to 25 years of socialism in the capital of France.

If the five lists are maintained in the second round, the socialist Grégoire would prevail against Dati by a whisker (33%-32%).

Dati would win the mayor’s office in the event of triangulating (49%) against the socialist (40%) and the rebellious Chikirou (11%). If the third party in contention were the centrist Bournazel, he could add up to 15% and become the kingmaker since Dati would remain at 43% and Grégoire at 42%.

The candidate Dati would recover Paris for the right in the hypothesis of a head-to-head against the socialist (53% to 47%).

The forecasts are more uncertain than ever because in addition to the unusual number of candidates who can exceed the 10% threshold, the election system has changed.

For the first time, voters in France’s three most populous cities – Paris, Marseille and Lyon – can elect the mayor with their vote. Until now voting was done by party lists but then the councilors voted for the mayor.

Furthermore, in Paris there are two ballot boxes that can be in different buildings, to elect metropolitan councilors, an intermediate entity with little power but with five million inhabitants, double that of the Parisian municipality and a little less than the Parisian region, Ile-de-France.