THE PEN. Marie-Caroline Le Pen represents the National Rally in the 6th district of Hauts-de-Seine and represents the party led by her sister, Marine Le Pen.
[Mis à jour le 12 juin 2022 à 23h49] What is the score of Marie-Caroline Le Pen in these legislative elections? If his name is very well known, his first name is a little less so, due to a withdrawal from political life for more than fifteen years. In the shadow of her father and her sister, she was nevertheless very active in her youth as an FN militant, until she made the choice to turn her back on the party to join the dissident Bruno Mégret. After a period of great distance, she will return to her family, in particular as support for Marine Le Pen.
Marie-Caroline Le Pen, who was among the 569 candidates invested by the RN for the legislative elections, was running in the 6th district of Hauts-de-Seine, a department in which she has held the position of regional councilor since last June. According to the first partial projections in this constituency, Constance Le Grip (Together!), comes first in the 6th constituency of Hauts-de-Seine with 36.01% of the vote. She is ahead of Nupes candidate Julie Barbaux (15.47%) while Marie-Caroline Le Pen, 5th, only collects 7.36% of the vote and is therefore eliminated.
In the past, the electoral candidacies of Marie-Caroline Le Pen have not been successful: she has several times sought the cantonal elections in the department, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, in vain: she was invariably beaten by Nicolas Sarkozy. Likewise, she failed in the legislative elections of 1993 and 1995, both times in this famous 6th constituency of Hauts-de-Seine and both times against the former right-wing president. She was also beaten in the second round of the legislative elections of June 1997, where she competed in the 8th district of Yvelines. Recently, she suffered yet another setback in the 2020 municipal elections, when she was a candidate in 18th position on the RN list in Calais led by Marc de Fleurian.
Marie-Caroline Le Pen’s positions are relatively similar to those of her family. In 2015, she defined herself as “catholic, nationalist and modern“, and described France’s exit from the euro zone as “anxiety program“, as reported by the Express. She said she was imbued with the “Bonapartism and the idea of a union of the rights“, like her husband, MEP and RN executive Philippe Olivier. On social issues such as marriage for all, she maintains a very conservative line, firmly opposing the 2013 law opening up marriage to same-sex couples. She is also reluctant on the question of intersectionality, and has openly attacked feminists, in particular those who “do not position themselves on the fact that women no longer have the right to dress as they want in the street”, as she confided to the Figaro. Finally, she even defends her party’s ideas on themes such as the rise in immigration or insecurity: during this same interview, she wanted to recall that her party was a forerunner in terms of security measures: “During my first mandate, we had proposed the creation of a transport police. All the elected officials had shouted and of course voted against… To finally create one ten years later”.
Born into a highly politicized family, she worked to collect the hundred signatures needed to file her father’s candidacy for the 1974 presidential election, before joining the National Youth Front a year later. In parallel with her commitment to her father, particularly during the 1983 campaign for the partial legislative election, she wrote articles for Figaro Magazine, under the pseudonym “Marie-Caroline Duick”.
After a few unsuccessful applications, she sat on the culture commission of the Ile-de-France regional council from 1986 to 1992. She left the post when she was elected regional councilor in Hauts-de-Seine after the elections. in 1992. Her career then finally seemed to smile on her: in March 1997, she was elected to the central committee of the FN, and in 1998, she was reappointed as regional councilor for Ile-de-France.
Many media have reported on this political and family divide: in 1999, when the FN split, Marie-Caroline Le Pen decided, with her husband Philippe Olivier, to rally behind Bruno Mégret and his Mouvement National Républicain instead of remain in the historical party of his father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. She tries all the same to appease the relations between the two sides of the FN, in vain: the “charter of national reconciliation” which she launches will be swept away out of hand by her father. She broke ties with her father when he spoke about her at 8 p.m. on TF1, referring to these “women who are used to following their husband or their lover rather than their father”. After a brief period of engagement within the MNR, in particular when she was in the top 5 of the list of the movement in the European elections, she resigned. In May 2000, she left politics.
In 2007, at the time of her father’s very last presidential campaign, she decided to support him and campaign on the ground alongside him. His trip to the markets with his sister Marine Le Pen are then particularly publicized. She did the same during Marine Le Pen’s first presidential campaign in 2012. A year earlier, the latter confided that she had completely forgiven her for rallying to Mégret “because she’s my sister and our children are cousins” (comments reported by RTL). In 2016, Marie-Caroline Le Pen even rejoined the FN, until she volunteered in her sister’s second campaign. In 2022, she makes a few appearances alongside the candidate and publicly shows her support.
She is now fully reintegrated into the RN camp, illustrated by her return to the Ile-de-France regional council, where her list garners 10.8% of the vote in the second round of the department’s regional elections in 2021. At a time when his party obtained historic scores in the 2022 presidential election, this new attempt in the legislative elections could perhaps be the right one. The answer tonight at 8 p.m.!