CIOTTI. On this voting day, Eric Ciotti, LR deputy for the 1st constituency of the Alpes-Maritimes is trying his luck for a fourth term. After the presidential disappointment for his party, the man on the right has competition.
Polling stations open this Sunday, June 12 at 8 a.m. throughout the territory. In the Alpes-Maritimes, we have been preparing for this day for a while. A month before the official launch of the parliamentary campaign, Eric Ciotti announced that he had obtained the official support of the LR party to stand for a new mandate as a deputy in the 1st constituency of the Alpes-Maritimes. For this regular in the legislative elections, who has already been elected in 2007, 2012 and 2017, the parliamentary campaign should have been a formality. However, the one who presented himself twice under the UMP label and once under the LR banner in 2017, encountered strong competition. In the aftermath of a very complicated presidential election for Les Républicains, with the candidate Valérie Pécresse who, by far, achieved the worst score in the history of the party by collecting only 4.7% of the votes in the first round, the structure internal is in the process of being recomposed. Eric Ciotti, the most right-wing figure in the party, often compared to Eric Zemmour, faces an LREM candidate whose mentor is none other than a former LR, the mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi. Will he be able to access the second round of the legislative elections again?
Nominated as a candidate by the LR departmental committee of the Alpes-Maritimes, Eric Ciotti is seeking a fourth term as deputy in the 1st constituency, located in the center and south of Nice. In 2007 and 2012, he won the election hands down on behalf of the UMP, with 60.92% and 60.73% respectively in the second rounds, both years against the socialist candidate Patrick Allemand. In 2017, it was this time under the colors of the Republicans that he won by 56.21% against Caroline Reverso-Meinietti, candidate invested by the Republic in March. For the fallen candidate of the LR primary of December 4 (i bowed to Valérie Pécresse who won the nomination with more than 60% of the votes), it is now necessary to convince the 80,000 voters in the south of Nice to send back to the Assembly. We will know this evening if he has managed to take this first step successfully.
After a turbulent presidential campaign and a final result that called into question the party’s ability to recover (the bar of 5% of votes collected in the first round not having been passed, campaign reimbursement costs have been reimbursed very little), Eric Ciotti hopes to be able to count on the voters who have already elected him three times. However, in this 1st constituency, he faces a major competitor: this is Graig Monetti, LREM candidate chosen by the mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi to face him. Chief of staff to the Minister of Higher Education Frédéric Duval and deputy mayor of Nice delegate for Youth, this 29-year-old “Estrosi candidate” wants to beat Eric Ciotti on his field. In a video posted on his Twitter on May 3, he launched: “I am the only one to be part of a positive approach, far from bitterness, systematic opposition and partisan divisions”, thus taking up the rhetoric of the political rally dear to Emanuel Macron. Of a right-wing tendency, since he himself affirmed that his candidacy was that of “the right of progress”, he nevertheless wants to oppose a line of the right that is more “social” than an Eric Ciotti with identity ideas. If, in 2017, Eric Ciotti had largely beaten the candidate LREM who faced him in the second round (with 56.21% of the votes for the LR), the situation is very different in this year of re-election of Emmanuel Macron and tumble LRs.
This is one of the weapons used by Eric Ciotti’s political adversaries (on the left and sometimes in his own camp) to try to destabilize him. Through the ideas he carries and the content of his programme, Eric Ciotti shares a close bond of proximity with the Rassemblement national. If he denies it, and although he continues to distinguish LR and RN, Eric Ciotti is regularly called upon to justify his position vis-à-vis Marine Le Pen. But it is to Eric Zemmour that the deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes is generally compared, because of striking ideological similarities. When he competed for the nomination of the LR primary last December, Eric Ciotti had made immigration the fetish subject of his program. He pleaded, among other things, for a return to jus soli in favor of jus sanguinis, and for the inclusion of the Christian origins of France in the Constitution. When communicating his intention to vote for the second round of the presidential election, Eric Ciotti had assured that he would not opt for the candidate LREM (comments made on the set of TF1 on April 10), even though the vote ” barrage” against the far right was Valérie Pécresse’s request to her constituents during her speech on the evening of April 10.
But above all, it is the calls from the foot of the president of Reconquest towards Eric Ciotti which maintain this comparison. Already, the day after the LR primary, he had sent an open letter to the voters of Eric Ciotti to join him in his campaign, then qualifying Eric Ciotti as “indisputable patriot” and “reliable and sincere straight man”. . In this case, for these legislative elections, no candidate from Eric Zemmour’s party will stand against Eric Ciotti, as announced by the former polemicist on Twitter. Saying he wanted to rebuild the right and build a “coalition of the rights” or a “national union”, he invited members of the RN, DLF and RN who wished to join him, promising not to compete with them in the constituencies. More specifically, Eric Zemmour has undertaken not to present a candidate against “Marine Le Pen, Eric Ciotti and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan”, choosing to address the deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes rather than the former candidate LR Valérie Pécresse.
Learn more
The Man in the Shadow of Christian Estrosi. This is how we could describe the beginning of Eric Ciotti’s political life. Because it is as chief of staff of Christian Estrosi, president of the general council of the Alpes-Maritimes, from 2003 to 2007, that this former parliamentary collaborator cut his teeth before launching into the arena. In 2007, the Niçois was elected deputy in the 1st constituency of the Alpes-Maritimes, obtaining 60.92% in the second round, and joined the law commission of the National Assembly. On the strength of this electoral success, Eric Ciotti joined Christian Estrosi’s list during the municipal election in Nice in 2008. Elected, he was appointed first deputy mayor, in charge of sustainable development, urban planning, works and trips.
But this victory hides a setback: he suffered a defeat in the cantonal elections in March 2008. Then, in December 2008, Eric Ciotti presented himself in another canton whose general councilor had resigned. He won this seat, then he was elected to the presidency of the General Council of the Alpes-Maritimes. In order to respect the rule of limitation of mandates, Eric Ciotti gives up his post of municipal councilor of Nice. Alongside his career in the provinces, Eric Ciotti is also national secretary of the UMP. In charge of security issues, the one who is nicknamed “the gentleman security of the UMP” often makes the headlines for his controversial bills. In 2010, Eric Ciotti presented a law aimed at punishing “two years’ imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros for the fact by the father or the mother of leaving their minor child, when the latter has been prosecuted or sentenced for an offence, violating the prohibitions and obligations to which it is subject”. After having raised heated debates, this law will be challenged.
Conversely, the “Ciotti” law, which provides for the suspension of family allowances in the event of prolonged absenteeism, was adopted in June 2010. In 2011 and 2015, Eric Ciotti was re-elected in the cantonal elections in the canton of Saint-Martin- Vesubia. He remains President of the General Council of the Alpes-Maritimes. He was also re-elected deputy in the 2012 and 2017 legislative elections in the 1st constituency of the Alpes-Maritimes.
Military service
Eric Ciotti is one of the 2022 presidential candidates who say they are in favor of returning to military service in France. This public position is not without consequence for the deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes. After investigation by several journalists, it turns out that Eric Ciotti sought the support of politicians during his youth to escape his own obligations in this area.