In Perpignan, it has almost become a habit. Xavier Baudry, deputy mayor Louis Aliot (RN), poses, a thin smile on his lips, next to the golden cogwheel of Rotary International. The cream of the local economic world met on May 23 at the gourmet restaurant Le Clos des Lys, in the south of the city: there are members of the city’s chamber of commerce and industry, the charity association, artisans, and shopkeepers. All are gathered for the “apprenticeship prize” ceremony organized by the Rotary Club of Perpignan and the Catalan section of the Union of Local Businesses.
Since his “friend” Louis Aliot became mayor in 2020, Xavier Baudry has taken care to pamper the personalities “who matter” in the Perpignan business world. A month later, he was found posing with the participants of “L’Eté du bâtiment”, a major event of the Confédération de l’artisanat et des petites entreprises du bâtiment (Capeb) in Perpignan. “We invited everyone to this evening, even the prefect. They all withdrew, except the RN”, assures Laurent Plo, vice-president of the departmental Capeb and elected to the department’s chamber of trades and crafts. For several years, Plo has voted RN, and makes no secret of it. “In 2017, I voted for Macron, now, the RN no longer scares me,” he continues. The RN elected officials have proven that they know how to listen to shopkeepers and craftsmen.” Flatter, be available, listen: the municipal team seeks to reassure. “They are at all the events, says a connoisseur of the economic world of the Pyrénées-Orientales. Every time we organize a meeting, the RN elected officials are there, all the time. They have a drink, sit in a corner, and chat with the business leaders.”
A question that has been running through the party for a long time
The town hall taken by Louis Aliot is a showcase for the RN, and the mayor intends to cultivate his relationships with the city’s well-known figures. “In the South, the business community, artisans, elected representatives of the chambers of commerce are identified as ‘people who count’, analyses Emmanuel Négrier, CNRS research director in political science at the University of Montpellier. Wherever the RN holds power, its members have taken care to maintain very dynamic relationships with the structures of civil society that have influence.” It is no longer rare to see RN elected representatives mingling with influential local associations. Thomas Ménagé, outgoing MP for the fourth constituency of Loiret, poses alongside members of the Rotary Club Montargis-Gâtinais. Caroline Parmentier, outgoing MP for the ninth constituency of Pas-de-Calais, shakes hands at the general knowledge quiz of the Rotary Club Béthune-Artois. Emmanuel Taché de la Pagerie, outgoing MP for the 16th constituency of Bouches-du-Rhône, rubs shoulders with exhibitors at the Wine and Gourmet Fair in Arles and its organizers, the Lions Club Arles-Camargue. Rotary, Lions Clubs, chambers of commerce… RN representatives have launched a “seduction operation” with local notables. With varying degrees of success.
The issue of the notabilization of elected officials has been a topic of discussion within the National Rally for decades. “It has been a point of contention between Bruno Mégret and Jean-Marie Le Pen since the 1990s,” continues Emmanuel Négrier. The former considered that the FN could only conquer power by deploying a strategy of local roots by building links with structures such as chambers of commerce, agriculture, and crafts. The latter opted for a tactic where the party had only one head, served by interchangeable candidates with no local depth.” Put on hold after the divorce between Mégret and Le Pen, the issue returned in the 2010s. “From the moment its strategy of de-demonization began, the idea took hold that the party could only conquer power by developing territorialized logics.” The strategy was facilitated by electoral conquests.
Black sheep
The 13 million votes in the second round of the presidential election, followed by the entry into the National Assembly of 89 deputies in 2022, have made the National Rally more acceptable than in the past. The 143 seats obtained by the party and its allies in the early legislative elections risk accentuating this phenomenon. “The RN vote has long been considered a ‘shameful’ vote, that is to say, more difficult to admit than others because of the public stigma weighing on this electoral preference, writes sociologist Félicien Faury in his book Ordinary voters (Threshold, 2024). […] For many, voting for the RN is a normal vote, in the sense that it conforms to local socio-political norms and meets with the approval of people with whom one shares common life experiences.” This “counts in the middle classes, where the question of social responsibility is important,” added the sociologist to the World. According to the results of the early legislative elections, the upper middle and wealthy classes follow the same logic. In 2022, only 14% of upper middle class voters and 11% of those from wealthy or privileged backgrounds assumed they would vote RN. Two years later, these figures jumped to 25% among the former and 21% among the latter.
This change in the electorate is also reflected in the candidates presented in the early legislative elections. According to figures from the Ministry of the Interior, in the second round there were at least 13 company directors with ten or more employees, around fifteen lawyers – some of whom are university professors at the same time – and five general practitioners, neurologists or dental surgeons.
RN at Lions Clubs
In November 2023, a survey of The New Republic noted the mix of genres – before cleaning – on the Facebook page of François Ducamp, young president of the Lions Club of Amboise – Val de Loire and departmental delegate of Marine Le Pen’s party. His predecessor until 2023, Corine Fougeron, had also not hidden her involvement in the RN. “It is clearly the same militant galaxy in search of respectability, analyzes Brice Ravier, mayor of Amboise (without label, close to the PS). But many, at the Lions Club, are very uncomfortable with these practices. The association is supposed to be apolitical.” Candidates in the second and fifth constituencies of Indre-et-Loire, both lost on Sunday July 7 – not without promising to return, in the case of Corine Fougeron, to the “next municipal elections”.
Proof that the RN’s notabilization remains to be perfected. “Their rooting strategy has its limits,” points out Emmanuel Négrier. “When the RN does not hold power in a place, relations with chambers of agriculture and associations are much less developed.” In many departments, particularly in the West, it is much more difficult to find traces of connections between the party and local notables. “Quite simply because we did not really have a massive RN vote until now,” notes Eric de Falco, a dental surgeon and president of the Union of Local Businesses of Seine-Maritime, who is very involved in local life. We are not usually an area where the extremes perform well, and we do not claim this vote from union representatives. But even here, anger is growing.” The RN’s recipe is starting to be known: stir up anger… before flattering the notables.
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