After two mandates at the head of Paris, Anne Hidalgo formalized her desire not to run again in the municipal elections of 2026. The one who was also a socialist candidate in the presidential election of 2022 explains, in an interview with the newspaper The Worldhaving “always been part of the idea that two mandates were enough to carry out profound changes“.
A rare occurrence in politics to be highlighted, Anne Hidalgo dubs the candidate she wants to see take over. “A transmission, evokes the socialist mayor of the capital, carried by Rémi Féraud”.
“I know him well, I have appreciated him for a very long time; he is the one who will be able to carry our history and reinvent a future for Paris. He has the necessary solidity, seriousness and ability to come together“, she adds in The World. Still unknown to the general public, who is Rémi Féraud and why does Anne Hidalgo support him?
Committed to the PS since 1993
Rémi Féraud is a socialist senator from Paris since 2017, re-elected in 2023. As for his commitment to the Socialist Party, we must go back to the 1990s. In 1993, he joined the young socialist movement, then a year later, he joined the branch operating in the 10th arrondissement. from Paris. “Politics is a passion,” he assured our colleagues at Point. In 2017, he supported the candidacy of socialist candidate Benoît Hamon.
In terms of local involvement, in 2001, he was elected municipal councilor. Seven years later, he was elected mayor of the 10th arrondissement of Paris. He will be alongside Bertrand Delanoëin 2008, during the latter's municipal campaign. In 2014, he will lead Anne Hidalgo's campaign in the municipal elections in Paris. A year later, during the regional elections, he served as campaign director for socialist candidate Marie-Pierre de La Gontrie.
To those who call him an apparatchik? Rémi Féraud responds: “The fact of being mayor, of being a sort of business manager at the head of a team, protects me from this.”
1st mayor to install a shooting room in his district
In 2016, he campaigned as mayor of the 10th arrondissement for the installation of a shooting room and obtained it. He will be the first mayor of the capital to do so. A year later, the town hall of this district recognized that a “drastic reduction in the number of drug addicts who use outside the room is necessary”, as indicated in an article in the Monde.
A “respectful, but firm” relationship with the partners of the left
In an interview with Parisian published a few days before Anne Hidalgo's announcement not to run again in Paris, support from Rémi Féraud at City Hall explained: “It is very solidwith analytical capacity. He is not embarking on a personal approach, but he has great parliamentary experience and local life.”
Anne Hidalgo has already hinted at what her choices will be regarding alliances with the groups that make up the left. “Rémi has always been able to maintain a respectful, but firm relationship with the partners of the left who are part of our team and, as a senator since 2017, it also has a national dimension”, she explains in The World.
Asked in 2011 about his ambitions which at the time concerned the municipal elections in Paris of 2014, Rémi Féraud responded to Point : “You have to set yourself objectives that suit you and I know that after being mayor, other objectives will be within my reach. I do not exclude any national responsibility“.
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