There are less than three weeks left. How to go up, come back, when she is in fifth position in the polls? How to breathe new life into a campaign that has sorely lacked it since January? At Valérie Pécresse’s HQ, we want to be combative. “We are at full speed, we continue”, launches the general secretary of the campaign, Magali Lamir. “Everyone is campaigning like crazy, we refrain from moods”, adds the deputy Les Républicains (LR) of Doubs Annie Genevard.
The LR candidate, who chained meetings last week – Meaux, Nîmes, Toulouse and Vannes – intends to continue to crisscross the territory, convinced that these trips will eventually pay off, as for Jacques Chirac in 1995.
She has planned three big meetings before the first round: Bordeaux on March 25; Lyon on April 7, it will be the last, alongside the president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region Laurent Wauquiez; and, between the two, Paris, on April 3, at the Porte de Versailles, in an attempt to “wash the affront” – in the words of its communicator Geoffroy Didier – from the Zénith failed, from which everything came to a standstill.
Failing to be able to debate with her opponents, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen having declined, the LR candidate will chain “TVs” all week: she was to be on the CNews channel on Monday, before participating, Tuesday, in an evening organized by the conservative weekly Current values. The next day, she will be the guest of Cyril Hanouna on C8, where she will debate with Jordan Bardella (National Rally), the zemmourist Marion Maréchal, and the “rebellious” Adrien Quatennens. Before participating, Thursday, in the program “Elysée 2022” on France 2. The opportunity, repeat his relatives, to hammer home that his project is the most ” serious “ and “credible”the only one able to offer a work-study program to the French.
An impossible synthesis
Not enough to really reassure right-wing elected officials, torn between disappointment, faced with a campaign that escapes them, and a feeling of “mess” and “of injustice”. “There is no premium for seriousness and hard work”, regrets the spokesperson for the candidate, Florence Portelli, who is sorry to see the “populists” ahead in the polls.
In fact, Pécresse has so far failed to loosen the noose between Emmanuel Macron – who has drawn many measures from his program – and Eric Zemmour, getting lost in an impossible synthesis, obsessed with bringing the family together. , at the risk of diluting its own political identity. And then, “all the critics have converged on us”, sighs Annie Genevard.
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