Skydiving means knowing how to land and, above all, where you will put your feet. This is even more true in politics. Lucie Castets, who was unable to land in Matignon, as Emmanuel Macron wanted, did not intend to stop there and has since then been looking for a track, a piece of land, a piece of grass on which to land and continue his young political career. The resignation of LFI deputy Hugo Prevost, targeted by accusations of sexual and gender-based violence, opened the way for the aspiring Prime Minister of the New Popular Front in the first constituency of Isère where a partial legislative session is due to be held soon.
Many are pushing this Norman native to be a candidate and thus swell the benches of the left in the National Assembly, but the matter appears more difficult for the summer muse of the NFP. Another problem, and not the least: the idea of a “Castets” candidacy on these Grenoble lands is far from being unanimously supported within the political apparatuses of the left-wing coalition.
Among the rebels, only Eric Coquerel, president of the finance committee, does not hide his enthusiasm for the idea. “I am for this solution, yes, it would be positive, but it is necessary, in the event that she replaces a France insoumise deputy, that she joins the France insoumise group”, he hastily launched on the set of Sunday in Politics, on France 3. A craze that Manuel Bompard, coordinator of LFI, was quick to moderate on Monday at the LCP microphone: “It’s part of the scenarios. We’re discussing it with her.” And this will be the position of the leadership of the movement which has, she said, “not yet opened internal reflection” and is waiting for the resignation of their deputy “to be effective”. In short, it is urgent to wait, no offense to the “castetophiles” of the left. Éric Piolle is one of them: the mayor of Grenoble is leading a very vigorous campaign to convince the person concerned and the left-wing parties to get involved. The councilor has little desire to see the Grenoble constituency fall again into the hands of the local right of Alain Carignon, his predecessor at town hall, who brought down this socialist bastion in 1983.
“Cramer” Castets
For its part, the Socialist Party, which discusses a lot with Lucie Castets, has even more doubts about the operation. No doubt because the Grenoble playing field proves tricky for the left… “The only time the left won this constituency since Carignon was in 2012 during the Hollande wave,” explains a PS emir. In 2017, it was the Macronist Olivier Véran who delighted her. The former Minister of Health, who recently dropped the cosmetic doctor’s knife to embark on a career as a lobbyist, told a few friends that he would be ready to run for deputy if by chance Lucie Castets was launching. But both of them could lose their teeth…
During the NFP negotiations after the dissolution, the constituency was the result of brief discussions between the PS and LFI. The first preferred to cede it to the rebels, for the benefit of better territories. “It was won by the left a little by surprise, because there was an overmobilization of the electorate which will not happen in a partial legislative where abstention is always higher”, explains a socialist legate of the NFP who doesn’t budge: “We must not burn Lucie over there.”
There precisely, during the last legislative election born from the dissolution, the rebellious candidate achieved his best scores in the offices of the city of Grenoble, i.e. 50% of the votes in the constituency. A victory down to the wire, with 1,200 votes more than Olivier Véran, which he also owes to a triangular (the Ciottist candidate, supported by the RN, remained) which scattered the votes to the right and to the center . The socialists therefore prefer to think about a candidacy rather capable of recovering the votes of the center left, a champion of the Public Place tendency, the movement of Raphaël Glucksmann. In June, in the European elections, the MEP collected 21% of the votes cast in the constituency, compared to 13% for LFI. An autopsy of the vote that the socialists sent to Lucie Castets, before reminding her of the local realities in Grenoble, a regular scene of shootings and violence which has made security one of the primary concerns of residents. A subject on which the left has been struggling for several years.
Enough to make Castets doubt? “She has 70% of the desire to go there, and 30% of hesitation,” says one of her regular interlocutors who reports Castets’ hesitations: “The LFI label bores her, she knows that she risks to lose feathers, that it’s a single-shot rifle.” And if she were to delight the constituency, other problems would arise for her and the NFP: the rebels have already informed their partners that Lucie Castets was intended to sit within the rebel parliamentary group since the constituency is theirs. was allocated during the negotiations. The socialists obviously don’t see it that way, nor do the ecologists. Their kingdom for a Grenoble horse.
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