He is not a candidate, but his name is at the heart of the internal campaign on the right. In media diet for several years, Laurent Wauquiez begins, by small touches, his return to the national scene. “I will tell you things very clearly and as I think of them: in 2027, either it will be me or it will be Marine Le Pen”, he assured without hiding, this Monday, in the Obs.
In this fight, the boss of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region is well helped by Eric Ciotti, presidential candidate Les Républicains, whose first round takes place on Saturday and Sunday. He promised to make him the champion of the right for the next presidential election in 2024. A campaign argument far from achieving consensus within the right.
“All you have to do is press a button”
“Thank you Laurent for embodying this strength, this courage and this hope for France”. It’s a habit in recent months, Eric Ciotti has multiplied the sweet words towards the ex-boss of the right. Last Friday evening in Montélier, near Valence (Drôme), the enarque was for the first time in the public, a few days after publicly supporting his “friend” from the Alpes-Maritimes. A way of illustrating the ticket promised to members in the event of victory at the congress, this Sunday.
“Eric is not going to the ballot hiding, he displayed his strategy from the start. The DNA of the right is the culture of the leader, the incarnation. We have to come back to that and according to him, the best way to become attractive again in 2027 is Laurent Wauquiez, ”assures LR deputy Eric Pauget, spokesperson for the candidate in this internal campaign. The elected representative of Nice therefore warned that he would rid the right of “all kinds of primary” by having the name of Laurent Wauquiez validated as quickly as possible by the authorities of the party. “Like that, there is no more subject. We will have a president and a natural candidate. And the day Wauquiez goes into battle, all you have to do is press a button, ”says Arnaud Julien, departmental secretary of Hérault and member of the political bureau.
“Why is he not running for the LR presidency? »
Enough to put the boss of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes in the best possible position. But if the “Wauquiez card” hit the mark with activists, it was coldly received by some right-wing leaders, undecided to abandon their ambitions now, and without a fight. First, Xavier Bertrand, the historical rival, who has still not buried his Elysian dreams.
The president of Hauts-de-France recently supported Aurélien Pradié in the race for the LR presidency. This is good, because the deputy of Lot, who does not want “neither primary, nor contraption” either, was very unenthusiastic about the choice of Eric Ciotti. “It is a mistake to immediately designate the person who could be our candidate. He would become the target of our adversaries ”, sweeps the deputy of Aisne Julien Dive, support of Pradié and close to Bertrand. “If Wauquiez wanted to get back into the game, why didn’t he run for the LR presidency? »
“It is a mistake to put a target on his back”
The same argument is used in the entourage of Bruno Retailleau, the other presidential candidate. “Appointing our candidate four years before the presidential election is nonsense. It’s putting a target on your back. And if the Europeans of 2024 go badly, that disqualifies him, ”evacuates one of the relatives of the senator from Vendée, supporter of an internal primary. An electoral slap like that of the Europeans of 2019 or a controversy like the sumptuous dinners organized for the region recently pinned in the press, could quickly tarnish the image of the darling of the militants by the presidential election.
“So that won’t settle anything for 2027, because Xavier Bertrand and Davis Lisnard [maire de Cannes] have their own shop. The congress should not be a primary before its time, ”we add in the Retailleau camp. But at Ciotti, we want to believe that a landslide victory, perhaps even in the first round this Sunday, will finish knocking out the other ambitions. But in politics, and especially on the right, scripts written in advance rarely go as planned.