Bertrand, Pécresse, Ciotti, Juvin … On the right, traffic jam of presidential candidates – BFMTV

Eric Ciotti announced this Thursday morning on our board his candidacy for the primary of the right. He is the third official contender, without counting Xavier Bertrand who, for his part, wants to step over this preliminary stage to the presidential election. This is especially without counting the crowd of personalities approached.

“I reassure you: personally, I am not a candidate. One of the few.” The joke of Damien Abad – deputy elected in Ain and president of the “Republicans” group in the National Assembly – on our antenna this Thursday morning, badly conceals the embarrassment of his political family. Eight months before the presidential election, the right still does not know what tomorrow will bring for it, but already knows that at this crossroads, it is a traffic jam of ambitions that awaits it. A traffic jam from which she can fear a collision as much as the siding. More than a highway to victory anyway.

Thus, between the LR candidacies and those coming from the margins of the party, there is a plethora of contenders – declared or not – in the supreme ballot on the right. This Thursday morning, it is the deputy elected in the Alpes-Maritimes, Eric Ciotti, who announced his candidacy for the primary of the right at the microphone of our journalist Jean-Jacques Bourdin.

“Yes, I decided. I will be a candidate for the primary of the right to designate our common candidate, to get our country out of the slope of decline, to give hope to this declining France,” he said. .

3 – soon 4 – already in the dance and the floor is crowded

He is the third official aspirant, after the president of the Ile-de-France Regional Council, Valérie Pécresse, and the emergency doctor Philippe Juvin, mayor of La garenne-Colombes. Xavier Bertrand? He too, yes, has declared his intentions very clearly but has already decided to override the internal competition to “go and meet the French”, according to the expression.

This evening will follow the former European negotiator for Brexit Michel Barnier, who promised at the end of May on BFMTV to “take (his) part in the presidential debate”, and who must, according to our information, announce his candidacy on TF1. Behind him, we can still distinguish the more or less consistent or insistent shadows of the president of the Regional Council of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Laurent Wauquiez, who confided this summer to the Figaro Magazine “wanting to try to the end this chance to be able to bring together”, or Bruno Retailleau, boss of senators LR, who has continued to push for the holding of the primary.

We will add to this list the names of the President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, hurry To tribune shots, and David Lisnard, the mayor of Cannes, who slipped to Opinion on August 15 that he could well compete “like others”.

Favorites on the sidelines

This one is more emblematic of one of the vertigo that seizes the right when approaching this final straight before the presidential election. It does not seem able to draw its strength and momentum from the LR framework. David Lisnard a founded his own movement last June, “New Energy”, without leaving the flagship. Valérie Pécresse, for her part, set sail in spring 2019, now sailing under her “Free!” Flag. And Xavier Bertrand is also independent from the parent company since December 2017.

And it is these last two free electrons who are favorites to represent their camp in the presidential election. Which does not say so much, moreover, about their chances of winning in the election. In the Harris Interactive poll published Wednesday in Challenges, the Northerner is credited with 16% of the voting intentions, losing one point compared to the previous measurement carried out in July, a percentage recovered by Valérie Pécresse which nevertheless tops out at 13%.

On all sides the machine to lose

Far, far, from the 26% and 25% respectively devolved in this scheme to Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron. If they presented themselves simultaneously – a hypothesis which is not at all aberrant given that Xavier Bertrand should refuse to attend the primary – the Hauts-de-France man would total 11% according to this snapshot, against 8% for his rival .

A prospect of which Damien Abad made the absolute foil this Thursday on our channel.

“At the end (of the nomination process, editor’s note), we know that there will only have to be one left. We will certainly have other declarations of candidacy in the weekend because it is the moment when everyone has to speak. It doesn’t matter whether we have four, five or six candidacies, the challenge is that we only have one, not too late, so that we are in the match against to the President of the Republic and facing Madame Le Pen “.

The primary, then, would be essential to rule out the losing machine? Damien Abad himself should not be so convinced, he who rolls for Xavier Bertrand, while judging the candidacy of Eric Ciotti “serious, credible”.

“Damien Abad himself said the deadlock in which LR is placing himself because on the one hand he says: ‘We absolutely need a candidate and only one, that clarity be made as quickly as possible’. On that point he’s right. And on the other side he says, ‘But you don’t need a primary.’ And when you ask him about his favorite candidate, he says, ‘So-and-so is very good, so-and-so is very good, one too ‘”, commented on our tray Guillaume Tabard, editor-in-chief at Figaro.

The poll of all expectations

If others must materialize their desire to appear by this weekend, it is because a first deadline is looming … and with great strides. From Monday, commissioned by LR, Ifop will launch a major consultation of 15,000 supporters of the right and the center, which must have found its conclusion on September 25, for the party congress.

This study aims to ask this invigorating panel to decide on the advisability or otherwise of this primary which fails to reach a consensus and whose outlines we do not even see: what agenda? In one run? In two rounds? But, for the dignitaries of the right, the investigation will above all have the virtue of testing the applicants according to different criteria and the point of view of the base: to whom the aptitude to reform? Who else can get the country out of the health crisis? To top the competition in April 2022?

A few weeks for a compass

Dominated and taunted by the top of the State, largely overwhelmed by the National Rally of Marine Le Pen, followed by the fever Eric Zemmour which threatens to cut croupiers, the intramural right is advancing decidedly without a compass.

“On the right, we have the culture of the chef… And the great chefs are gone!” remarked our political columnist Laurent Neumann after the intervention of Eric Ciotti.

“When people show up like, ‘why not me?’ before thinking: ‘why?’ quite simply, it is that obviously, there is neither boss, nor star, nor natural candidate “, supported his counterpart Matthieu Croissandeau.

There are a few weeks left on the right, at best a few months, to ask the right questions, in the right order, and get back to the right place. This is little for a political family which, four years later, still seems so disoriented by the election of Emmanuel Macron.