Seven candidates for the legislative elections but above all three major parties which have failed to unite. This is the table of the third district of the Alpes-Maritimes which includes the north of Nice and the municipalities of Saint-André-de-la-Roche, La Trinité and Falicon.
Cédric Roussel, the outgoing deputy under the label of La République en Marche during his term of office, was not reinvested by the presidential majority, preferring the deputy mayor of Nice, Philippe Pradal. He said in a statement [il n’a pas répondu aux sollicitations de 20 Minutes], that he reaffirmed his commitment “alongside the re-elected President” wishing to continue his action in the National Assembly. He said he was “surprised” by the candidacy of “new supporters” because for him, “supporting the President does not mean taking the risk of having one of his deputies beaten”.
Philippe Pradal assures him “to have called to vote Macron since the second round of the presidential election of 2017” and simply want to continue his experience as a local elected official that he has been carrying out “since 2008”, in Parliament. For him, this plurality allows a “dignified debate”.
The game of musical chairs on the far right
Another candidate also suffered the disappointment of the nomination of another by his party. “There is not much that brings me closer to Mr. Roussel apart from the fact that we suffered the same injustice”, concedes Philippe Vardon. Arriving in the second round in this same constituency in 2017, he will not wear the colors of the National Rally but those of Reconquest. He wanted “a union of parties” but finds himself “the victim of a political error”.
The RN chose Benoît Kandel, former departmental coordinator of Reconquest. “They came to get me,” he says. Philippe Vardon excluded himself. But my real opponents are the macronie and the left”.
The latter, too, failed to unite. Dominique Boy-Mottard ran as a candidate when Enzo Giusti had just been invested by The New Popular Ecological and Social Union. For Juliette Chesnel-Le Roux who is “indignant”, it is “a remote-controlled attempt at division”. According to the elected EELV at the town hall, there could be a second round between the RN and the left, without Philippe Pradal who would be “in difficulty and without notoriety”.
Why does everyone want 3?
Philippe Pradal and Benoît Kandel answered the same thing about their desire to present themselves in this territory: “The third constituency is a small piece of France, which represents it with all its diversity”, advances the first. The second develops: “There is urban, rural and peri-urban, a typology found throughout the country”. Philippe Vardon denies being “attached to these neighborhoods” where he has family and “wants to try his luck again” where he already presented himself in 2017.