IIt was 10 o’clock this Tuesday, July 2, when the press release was released. Silent since Sunday evening, the outgoing Modem MP Anne-Laure Babault announced the withdrawal of her candidacy in the 2e constituency (Rochefort-Aunis). Coming in third place on Sunday evening, she will leave Benoît Biteau (New Popular Front) and Karen Bertholom (National Rally) to compete for the voters’ favor on Sunday, July 7.
A decision taken that very morning, with a heavy heart, without the Modem leadership dictating it to her, she assures. Nevertheless, she is aware that instructions could have come from the leadership of the centrist party later during this decisive day.
The filing of Benoît Biteau’s candidacy on Monday sounded the death knell for her calculation made on the evening of the first round. Namely, that she believed she was best placed to beat the RN with the support of the 9,651 votes of the Republicans acquired by Hervé Blanché, who had indicated that he would vote for her. A reasoning that had become “too risky in the context of a three-way race,” she agreed, while she is more than 7,000 votes behind the RN.
Bitter, Anne-Laure Babault says she regrets the candidacy of the mayor of Rochefort, who according to her would have changed the situation on the evening of the first round instead of this reciprocal neutralization. Hervé Blanché passes the responsibility of the “President of the Republic” to her while ensuring the analysis of the presumptuous deputy on the grounds that he believes he has captured more of the far-right electorate than the centrist one: “In Saintes and Royan, the RN exceeds 40%” he sighs (against 34.41% here).
Beyond these perilous and random calculations of vote transfers, Anne-Laure Babault above all complied with the rule described as “absurd” of the withdrawal incumbent on the candidacy coming third in order to block the RN.
Between the lines
The fact remains that the last 48 hours have left their mark on the woman who has been subjected to a flood of virulent, even “threatening” messages on social networks. Also considering the personality of environmentalist Benoît Biteau “divisive”, she is not giving any voting instructions for the second round.
But if Anne-Laure Babault has not expressly called for a blockade of the RN, like the former minister and president of the Department Dominique Bussereau or the departmental office of Renaissance, her withdrawal can also be deciphered as a desire not to offer the constituency on a platter to Karen Bertholom.
This is the interpretation retained by Benoît Biteau, assuring that this withdrawal “honors” him. “This choice is also the beginning of an instruction” he continues, considering that “all the conditions are met” to emerge victorious from this duel on Sunday.
For his part, Hervé Blanché did not give any instructions or the meaning of his vote on Sunday, arguing “the secrecy of the vote”. But here too, one must read between the lines: the mayor of Rochefort makes a distinction in his mind between “a phantom candidate who could become a phantom MP” and his former “regional councillor colleague who is not an extremist”.
