Laurent Wauquiez and Xavier Bertrand are already facing each other to be the LR candidate for the 2027 presidential election. Supported by the boss of the right, the president of the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes region refers to the failure of his rival in 2022.
The battle to be the right-wing candidate for the 2027 presidential election begins. While Laurent Wauquiez, who has still not formalized his candidacy, appears to be the choice of the boss of the Republicans, Eric Ciotti, to represent the party, another candidacy stands in his way: that of Xavier Bertrand. But the official entry of the president of Hauts-de-France into the race does not seem to worry that of the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes region.
If Laurent Wauquiez recognizes “legitimate” ambitions in his right-wing rival, he believes in an interview given to Nice morning this Thursday, February 15 that “it won’t be enough”. The Lyonnais, discreet on the national scene in contrast, judges that Xavier Bertrand campaigns according to an outdated method and arguments: “If we think that it will work tomorrow with the recipes of the past, the same preconceived ideas, the same functioning, it will not succeed”.
When announcing his candidacy to represent LR in the presidential election, in the columns of West France on February 3, Xavier Bertrand insisted on his plan to block the National Rally and to be the alternative chosen by the French. “Many today already think that 2027 will be Marine Le Pen’s turn. Not me! I am convinced that there is not a majority of fascists in our country but there is a majority of angry French people. J “I intend to respond to it when the time comes,” he said. The speech was indeed the one already made by the right-wing candidate, Valérie Pécresse, and by the re-elected president, Emmanuel Macron, in 2022. Xavier Bertrand recycled another argument from his campaign in the LR primary of 2021, in which he had finished fourth: defend the Republic of the territories with a decentralized system. According to him “by wanting to take care of everything, the State blocks everything” while at the national level the State must “ensure the state: security, justice, control of immigration, defense, fight against Islamism” and let the rest be decided at the regional or local level.
A “natural” candidate for LR?
Laurent Wauquiez does not have to answer for the failures of the right in 2022 since the man had given up running in the party primary and therefore possibly being the LR candidate. But in view of 2027 he is the “personality [qui] has the best qualities to embody the future of the right” according to Eric Ciotti. Unwavering support from the boss of the right which could make the president of the Auvergne Rhône Alpes region the “natural candidate” of the party. Absolutely not according to Xavier Bertrand for whom his rival “is the natural candidate of Éric Ciotti, but is not the natural candidate of LR”. The two men could, as the election and the presidential campaign approach, submit to a primary and let It is up to the Republicans to decide. With this in mind, Xavier Bertrand has already asked the question “which will arise at a given moment”: “Does our political family want to win, or not?”