Politics. Eric Ciotti or Bruno Retailleau? It is D-Day for the election of LR president

An end to the tension Sunday evening: Les Républicains party elects its president this weekend in a runoff between Eric Ciotti, who is hardline on security and immigration, and Bruno Retailleau, who is conservative and liberal.

A start for Ciotti

In this race, Eric Ciotti leaves with a breakthrough: the deputy of Alpes-Maritimes collected 42.73% of the votes in the first round, 34.46% against the president of the senators LR Bruno Retalleau (and 22.30% for Aurelien Pradie). canceled) – 0.51% of the ballots were considered “blank”, but were included in the votes cast by the LR.

“I don’t understand why people who didn’t vote for the favorite in the first round did so in the second round,” said Julien Aubert, who supports Bruno Retailleau.

Both refuse to get close to Macron

The 91,110 members will vote electronically between 6pm on Saturday and 6pm this Sunday to elect a successor to Christian Jacob, who resigned in June (Annie Genevard has been serving since). Results will be declared immediately.

The two candidates agree to reject any alliance with Macron and rally promises.

Eric Ciotti, who boasts of his allegiance to RPR, then LR, advocates a course of “presumptive right,” “abandoning political correctness,” in a very hard-line tone on security and immigration.

Bruno Retailleau, who has been very critical of Nicolas Sarkozy, promises him to “return the party to its members”, albeit “no longer”, but with a “clearly right-wing” line, consulting a referendum.

Aurélien Pradié is a very subtle king

One of the challenges facing each of the two rivals is to capture most of the 22% of votes obtained by Aurélien Pradié in the first round.

The latter urged Bruno Retailleau, one of the two finalists, to consider the “rights of the people” he carries in a letter that implicitly questioned him on Friday.

In a letter to Aurelien Pradie, the boss of the LR senators, he assured that he would take “his full place in our party” and “consider the project”.

“You can count on me that our family will speak to all the French people and win the trust of the people,” assured Eric Ciotti.

The two finalists have increased the vote of the Pradie electorate since Sunday. The Lot deputy did not give instructions on the vote, but several of his lieutenants, including deputies Pierre-Henri Dumont and Raphaël Schellenberger, lined up behind Eric Ciotti.

combat support

Because this election is also turning into a war of support. In the election campaign as a candidate for elected officials, the party can use the support of Bruno Retailleau, President of the Senate, Gérard Larche, Member of the European Parliament, François-Xavier Bellamy, François Fillon… he called privately on Sunday evening.

Around 120 parliamentarians demonstrated their choice for Bruno Retailleau, the “candidate of disintegration, renewal and unity” in the Le Figaro tribune on Monday evening.

On Friday, Christian Jacob and the head of LR deputies, Olivier Marleix, supported Eric Ciotti, who is using Troyes mayor François Baroin.

On Wednesday, 140 elected officials announced at a forum that they would vote for Eric Ciotti, “who will win.”

Disagreement over the 2024 presidential election

Laurent Wauquiez, in front of the signatories, at a public meeting in Paris on Thursday evening.

Eric Ciotti promises to quickly nominate him as a presidential candidate if he is elected president of the Auvergne-Rhône Alpes region.

The chart that his opponent is arguing about. “This obsession with presidential elections will kill us,” repeats Bruno Retalleau.

Sure, “Laurent Wauquiez has all the qualities,” but “there’s Xavier Bertrand and David Lisnard,” he adds in recent interviews.

With a 73% turnout in the first round, one of the keys to the second round will be mobilizing the majority of neutrals, restoring momentum to the party, which fell from 4.8% during the last presidential election.