Certainly, there are still a few months (March 9 and 16, 2014) before the municipal elections, but it is evident that some official, or less official, campaigns have already been launched by the candidates who are already known or by those who dream of being known. However, there remain unknowns within the teams composing them, in a possible surprise list, and not least of which, the name of the candidate who will be endorsed by the UMP.
Because, while the names of the PS and FN candidates, Patrick Allemand and Marie-Christine Arnautau, or even the ambitions of the former Mayor Jacques Peyrat and his Entente Républicaine allied with the Nice Identitarians, are already known, there is still uncertainty regarding the UMP candidate’s name, even if everything leads one to believe in a new candidacy from the outgoing mayor, Christian Estrosi. Certainly, other candidacies have been announced, like that of Jean Icart, but it’s difficult to reasonably imagine the local official reaching the second round.
In the left corner, it will thus be Patrick Allemand who returns to the fray against a UMP opponent, whoever it may be, who will once again be very difficult to unsettle. And then, he’s not likely to be the only opponent that the leader of “Changez d’Ere” will have to face, because if the Front de Gauche envisions itself at the starting line of the first round, there might also be a list which clearly won’t have a “left” label but could carry a certain leftist hue. Indeed, the fact of having “forgotten” the primaries in Nice has left many elected officials and activists craving more. The coming weeks will show if the disappointed can rally to form a common project and most importantly, find a head for the list.
But the great unknown of this upcoming municipal election remains, to this day, the name of the UMP candidate. To that end, as with other parties in place, there will be an endorsement commission which has just settled the matter for cities with over 10,000 inhabitants and will now tackle the larger ones after a well-deserved summer break. Logically, Christian Estrosi, the outgoing Mayor and President of the Nice Côte d’Azur Metropolis, should be the one chosen, but it’s known that sometimes logic is not the essence of politics, and even if they are just optional choices, there are indeed two other avenues that could be considered by this commission: Eric Ciotti and Olivier Bettati.
Without resorting to caricature and the more or less friendly relationships of those mentioned, it remains that they are two credible candidates for this role, just as they are in the relations they maintain with the UMP’s leadership. Eric Ciotti, in the span of a few years, has become one of the party’s strong figures behind François Fillon, who made him his campaign director, while Olivier Bettati is one of the few Nice UMP elected officials who defended the candidacy of the current President, Jean-François Copé. So, certainly, these are just projections, but it was seen in the not-so-distant past, during the last municipal elections, for example, that it was not necessarily the incumbent mayor with a not-so-negative record who won the election’s favor.
In short, after a summer period which will no doubt be conducive to reflection and much more, the verdict should fall in the autumn, and although it was believed, for the duration of a tweet, that Christian Estrosi was already on the starting line, it was apparent upon a video review that it was just the end of a sentence. Patience, therefore, and see you in a few weeks to finally know the full list of candidates who will officially enter the fierce battle for the Nice municipal elections.
