In February, before the official presidential campaign started, I had the opportunity to go to the plain of Ain, an unknown department which, bordering the Lyon metropolis, has partly become its peri-urban extension. There, a young candidate who is running for the first time in the legislative elections, Lumir Lapray, launched her campaign very early on. At 29, a graduate of Sciences Po Lyon, she is fully part of the “climate generation” and recognizes herself in the label “citizen”, which designates a way of doing politics, more participatory and inclusive, on the margins of parties. . After an experience of union activism in the United States, she returned to her region of birth strongly influenced by the culture of the American new left. Invested by Nupes, it leads a door-to-door campaign, a method brought up to date by American activists, in order to mobilize a whole modest electorate, often from minorities, in the working-class neighborhoods of the urban fringes of its region. constituency.
Popular ball and cavalcades
Other candidates from the pool of climate activism, such as the activist committed against the establishments of Amazon Alma Dufour or the researcher and environmental activist Claire Lejeune, support of Sandrine Rousseau, will wear the colors of Nupes in the legislative elections. In addition to the door-to-door that has become de rigueur, some candidates are renewing the approach of the left-wing meeting, such as this popular ball with country dancing or these cavalcades planned to be organized by Alienor Garcia-Bosch-de-Morales, 28 years old , horse breeder in the Cher region where she presents herself under the Nupes-LFI label.
In 2017, Emmanuel Macron and his young movement En Marche! embodied the renewal of political life. We saw the arrival of first-time walker candidates, graduates of business schools, engineers or management or communication courses, executives or consultants working in the world of private enterprise. They laughed at their jargon taken from PowerPoint presentations, but a breath of fresh air blew over the Assembly. Having become notables and, on the one hand, not wishing to stand again, these candidates have become commonplace and it is now the Nupes who have taken up the torch of novelty.
By prolonging his political destiny for at least a few months in the hope of becoming the Prime Minister of an improbable cohabitation with the President re-elected in May, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the French Bernie Sanders (sometimes compared to the American leader for his radicalism and its rating among young voters) may give birth to a new generation of activists, half-activists, half-influencers, revealed by Operation Nupes. A certain division of the territory took place during the national negotiations to invest the candidates representing the different sensitivities of the alliance. If socialist and communist candidates retain some historical strongholds, environmentalists are present in their areas of strength, large cities and neo-rural countryside.
New masters on the left of Greater Paris
Above all, the Insoumis and their allies are emerging as the new masters on the left of Greater Paris and its suburbs. Evidenced by the very Ile-de-France structure of the constituencies of the alliance’s headliners. Danièle Obono, Sophia Chikirou, Sandrine Rousseau and Julien Bayou are all candidates for intramural Paris, not to mention the people candidacy of Aymeric Caron. The “suburbanites” Clémentine Autain, Alexis Corbière, Eric Coquerel, Aurélie oublie and Raquel Garrido present themselves in Seine-Saint-Denis, where, according to the latter, the Nupes is squarely aiming for the electoral “strike” (winning the twelve constituencies of the department) . Manuel Bompard, another heavyweight in the rebellious organization chart, is a candidate in the very winnable district of downtown Marseille.
On the eve of a national election which is being played out in 577 constituencies, the territorial specialization of rebellious France and its allies is both a strength and a limit. Some portions of the territory, the big cities and their suburbs, can bring in big but, on the other hand, it is not obvious that the Nupes has at the end of the vote representatives who will embody the France of the sub-prefectures. The media, which abhors a vacuum but adores new faces, will quickly ask themselves the question of political recomposition in these terms: who to invite on set to embody the left-wing opposition to Emmanuel Macron’s second term? As a committed actor in the campaign prognosticates: “There will be some victories but also some surprise defeats. We will wait until Monday, June 20 in the morning to find out which candidates will board the trains for the Assembly.”