Flower market, Cours Saleya. Lavender, sunflowers, and at the bend of an alley: Eric Ciotti leaning in amazement over a basket of strawberries. “Rico come over here!”. Head to the fruit juice stand. The president of LR is on conquered ground here. As he passed, some traders, retirees, handshakes, and above all praise, after his alliance with the extreme right. “Courage to you. You were courageous”an elderly man slips to him, “On June 30, you know what to do”replies Eric Ciotti, “general mobilization!”. “I said well done to him.”welcomes Katty, a bank retiree. “It was time for him to make this alliance. And too bad for the old beards, Valérie Pécresse, Laurent Wauquiez and Gérard Larcher. He would be better off retiring.”
Eric Ciotti enjoys it. Too bad if he only included one MP in his pact with the RN, if he alienated his entire political family. He repeats it, Nice is not Paris, he is not alone here. “There is something happening in the country. This desire to break the diktats imposed by the Parisian general staff against the voters. Those who have been hiding for years, well they just had to lead the fights themselves”he said in a dig in particular at Laurent Wauquiez.
The political editorial Listen later
Lecture listen 3 min
Ciotti “raises the image of Nice”
To hinder his re-election, the LR historical canal staff nominated a candidate, Virgile Vanier-Guérin, a novice in politics, who applied by email. It was necessary to “good will”, he said, to face the local baron elected for over 15 years. The LR executives wished him good luck. But the business leader in his forties says he believes in his chances of victory. “Eric Ciotti completely betrayed his supporters and the LR executives. That he has been there since 2007 is one thing, but he was there with the ideas of LR. I am taking up the torch of the party’s ideas, and I invites all LR voters who believe in republican values to vote for me.”
He is not the only candidate who wants to embody the anti-Ciotti front. At the port of Nice, Graig Monetti brought together local traders to defend “the union of values, facing the union of extremes”. He is deputy mayor, very close to the mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi, he embodies the “Together” candidacy of the presidential majority. It was he who faced Eric Ciotti in the 2nd round in 2022, beaten by just over 4,000 votes. So for this lightning campaign, he defends a “republican front” in the face of “Eric Ciotti who tarnishes the image of Nice with his alliance”. “An MP who only thinks about his personal ambitions, and his desire to maintain his cook, his driver, his butler. And who took LR activists into the beds of Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen.”
The 7:50 a.m. guest Listen later
Lecture listen 9 min
Also facing him, the candidate of the New Popular Front, the Insoumis Olivier Salerno. According to him, his competitors are all defending more or less the same project. “These are people who all come from the same political family and who have the same software: liberal and not egalitarian, because racist speech here in Nice is quite unbridled. The only real alternative to Eric Ciotti is therefore the project that I am carrying out”, he says. In 2022, NUPES had won more than 20% of the votes in this constituency, the left is counting on an increase in participation to hope to qualify for the second round.
The complete list of candidates in the 1st constituency of Alpes-Maritimes
- Éric Ciotti (LR-RN, Union of the far right, UXD) – outgoing deputy
- Virgile Vanier (Les Républicains, LR)
- Graig Monetti (Presidential Majority Ensemble, ENS)
- Olivier Salerno (New Popular Front, Union of the Left, UG)
- Alain Langouet (Far left, EXG)
- Jean-Claude Wahid Spach (Regionalist, REG)
- Maxime Bovis (divers, DIV)
- Lalla Chama Ben Moulay (Ecologists, ECO)
