This is his last lap. Thursday April 7 in the evening, in Lyon, Geoffrey Carvalhinho was to animate the last meeting of Valérie Pécresse before the first round. At 32, this regional councilor from Ile-de-France has become both the mascot and the signature of the public meetings of the candidate of the party Les Républicains (LR). “Are you ready to welcome the future President of the Republic? »he shouts, according to a well-established ritual, before chanting “Valerie! », “Valerie! »
The more it slips in the polls, the more heart he puts into it. “You will remember this meeting in twenty years! », he launched, on February 14, at the Zenith. Premonitory, but not in the hoped-for way, whereas the event, missed, accelerates the sounding fall.
Common thread of the campaign, Carvalhinho is a pillar of the Pécresse team. The culmination of a long militant journey. His father, Portuguese, is a worker; his mother, secretary. It’s because of the movie Angelica, Marquise of Angels that the latter – whose father is a projectionist – calls her son Geoffrey. He grew up in an HLM in La Courneuve, shared his room with his brothers, completed a baccalaureate in mechanical engineering and a BTS.
“Heart Balm”
He was 15 in 2005 when Sidi-Ahmed, 11, took a stray bullet at the foot of a building in the city of 4,000. He lives 600 meters away, attends the visit of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, wants “clean the city with Kärcher” before promising residents more police and more jobs. “I understood that politics was the only way to change things”, he said. He pushes the door of a permanent UMP, sorry for his parents who have always voted on the left.
From a simple activist, he became number two of the young LRs in 2015, joined the Pécresse cabinet in 2018, in charge of elected officials, “least educated” of the team. In the municipal elections of 2014, he is the youngest candidate in a town of more than 30,000 inhabitants, Pantin (Seine-Saint-Denis), where he lives. He was defeated, before being elected to the region, in 2021.
The candidate entrusted him with leading her meetings, in addition to “militant life”. “The goal is to create the spark before it happens”says the one who describes himself as “a little crazy” at the microphone. As the campaign unraveled, his tour of France could have become the way of the cross but he, the good soldier, does not see things like that: “People bother to come, I have to make them feel good. To cheer them up because they believe in it! »
On April 3, Porte de Versailles, in Paris, he sketched three dance steps on the stage, to the sound of techno music. Elegant and joyful to the end, like the conductor of the TitanicWallace Hartley, went down in history for continuing to play on deck, as the hull creaked and took on water.