The National Rally presented its new representative for Nice during an assembly on June 23. Benoît Kandel takes over this position that has been vacant for a few months.
A former Estrosi supporter, Benoît Kandel navigates through politics, always steering to the right. On June 23, the former gendarmerie colonel was appointed head of the National Rally party in the commune. Initially, he wishes to “restructure and reorganize” the party, particularly in preparation for the European elections, he told BFMTV. The 62-year-old man does not currently aspire to stand as a candidate for the upcoming electoral events but aims to reassert his party in the local political landscape.
His team, “practically complete,” includes his first deputy who has also been appointed. This is Thierry Ferrand, a Nice entrepreneur who was briefly endorsed as the RN candidate during the 2022 legislative elections.
From Christian Estrosi…
The retired colonel left the army for politics. He started this career alongside Christian Estrosi, serving as his first deputy during Estrosi’s first term, from 2008 to 2013. The relationship between the two politicians ended badly. He was stripped of his delegations by the municipality as he was then implicated in the Semiacs affair. Charged with 17 counts, the court ruled in his favor five years later.
Right after his dismissal from the municipal majority, he was excluded from the UMP on suspicion of rapprochement with Marine Le Pen’s National Front. In 2014, he was elected as a miscellaneous right (DVD) municipal councilor, then opposing his former boss. It was in 2020 that he ran against the incumbent mayor in the municipal elections as head of the list for the National Center of Independents and Peasants (CNIP).
…to Éric Zemmour and finally the National Rally
In 2021, he was supposed to lead the Debout la France list for the regional elections. He quickly withdrew, notably for professional reasons and fundamental political disagreements with Nicolas Dupont-Aignan’s campaign.
On February 15, 2022, he officially joined Eric Zemmour’s campaign and became the head of the department within the polemicist’s movement. He even urged Éric Ciotti to join and, like him, adhere to the young Reconquête! party. He stepped down from his position on March 22, upon the arrival of Philippe Vardon, a recruit he could not tolerate and whose membership in the Zemmourist party he opposed.
By leaving Reconquête, he joined the National Rally, taking the opposite path of Philippe Vardon. Benoît Kandel’s appointment outraged Reconquête 06, who denounced the choice as “disastrous” and “scandalous”. In a press release, municipal councilor Jean Mouchebœuf declared: “In Nice, the RN will have gone in one year from a Philippe Vardon who has twice condemned the Estrosi municipality for its compromises with Islamists, to a Benoît Kandel from this system and having been one of the actors of these compromises.”
