The National Rally, which came out on top in the first round in Paca, ultimately failed to win the region. The outgoing LR president, Renaud Muselier, prevailed at the end of the second round with 57.3% against his opponent Thierry Mariani (RN).
The gamble was bold, a joint list with LREM, heavily criticized within his own camp by the “neither nor” orthodox. The fierce controversies that followed resulted in the resignation of Hubert Falco and Christian Estrosi, accused of “malfeasance.” Furthermore, in the Alpes-Maritimes, Eric Ciotti, David Lisnard and company did not campaign for the candidate finally maintained by their own party and they voted blank in the first round. Others played the role of Pontius Pilate.
With these premises, and polls predicting for two months a wide victory for the RN candidate Thierry Mariani, the outlook seemed bleak. In fact, Renaud Muselier, with the substantial support of Christian Estrosi and others, defied the odds, benefiting of course from the withdrawal of the socialist-ecologist lists in the second round.
Given equal standing with his rival in the polls from the day before, one can question the huge gap that separates his score from that of Thierry Mariani while the percentage of voters only marginally increased.
The latter attributed his defeat to “a coalition system” of parties, personalities, influencers, and various stakeholders. Indeed, his political offer was reduced to the slogan: “security, immigration,” whose limitations became evident throughout the campaign. A region, a crossroads between Europe and the Mediterranean, cannot be governed by promising more security guards in the TER trains!
Another mistake by the RN candidate was giving this election the appearance of a warm-up for the 2022 presidential election. Conversely, Renaud Muselier emphasized, alongside claiming a positive record of his mandate, the local nature of this consultation, as clearly indicated by his campaign title “Our Region First.”
This strategy’s evident success also brought great satisfaction for Christian Estrosi, who won against the rising star Marion Maréchal in 2015, a key player, and inspirer of the “rally” with the Macronists, who placed many of his allies on the electoral lists. By holding the position of number 2 in the regional community, he will have the means to benefit the Metropolis and the City of Nice.
Moreover, he will be able to leverage the 60% of votes on his list, a score higher than the total obtained.
The Mayor of Nice gathered candidates, elected officials, and activists on a beach in the evening to comment on the election results, delivering a brief speech with clear political content: “With my friend Renaud Muselier, whom I congratulate, we demonstrate that it is the spirit of unity and transcendence that allowed us to retain this region so hard-won six years ago. It is a victory for all democrats and republicans.”
And he challenged those local “adversaries” of his own political family: “I will tirelessly continue to fight against all extremes, including those masked extremes, who claimed before this first round that there was no difference between Renaud Muselier and Thierry Mariani… These Le Pen-compatible individuals tried to sabotage our campaign from the start.”
“We refused the inevitability of a region governed by the far-right,” said the outgoing president and candidate for re-election Renaud Muselier.
President Muselier then warmly thanked the support of Bernard Tapie, which he described as “emotional and decisive,” and that of Nicolas Sarkozy. He also acknowledged the withdrawal of Jean-Laurent Félizia’s list for this second round and had a word for Jean-Marc Governatori, hinting at an agreement with the ecologists.
