Anne Hidalgo will not seek a third term as mayor of Paris. She announced it this Tuesday, November 26 in Le Monde and immediately specified the name of the person she wants to see succeed her, opening the competition within the PS.
“I will not run for a third term.” Anne Hidalgo chose not to run for a new term as mayor of Paris and announced it in the columns of Monde this Tuesday, November 26, a year and a half before the next municipal elections. At the head of the capital since 2014, the socialist mayor put an end to the suspense while rumors about her political future had been circulating for several months. “It’s a decision that I took a long time ago. I have always been part of the idea that two mandates were sufficient to carry out profound changes,” assured Anne Hidalgo, whose politics and results are regularly commented on. and criticized by some Parisians.
If Anne Hidalgo announces her departure from Paris town hall several months before the elections it is to allow “to prepare a calm transfer to support a team” which will take over. The socialist, however, has a precise idea of the person she wants to see succeed her: Rémi Féraud. The socialist senator from Paris and president of the majority group in the capital's Municipal Council is one of Anne Hidalgo's great followers. “Rémi has the vocation to become the next mayor of Paris. But it is not me who decides, I do not impose anything, I simply give an indication. It will be up to the Parisian socialist activists to decide,” declared the Parisian city councilor.
Rémi Féraud, Anne Hidalgo’s greatest devotee
The politician Rémi Féraud has never been far from Paris since he entered politics. The 53-year-old from Versailles was mayor of the 10th arrondissement of the capital between 2008 and 2017, when he became senator of Paris, still under the PS label. But if he swapped City Hall for the Senate, the elected official continues to sit as president of the majority group in the Paris Council, a place he has held since 2014 and the arrival of Anne Hidalgo to the capital's town hall. A graduate of Sciences-Po in 1994, Rémy Féraud occupies a central place in the Parisian socialist circle which he joined the same year. He was also the first secretary of the Socialist Federation of Paris between 2008 and 2015 then between 2018 and 2021. Despite this political career, Rémi Féraud is not known to the general public and not many Parisian voters, unlike other candidates already declared or whose municipal ambitions are known.
The senator is known to be one of Anne Hidalgo's loyalists. Enough to suggest that the positions of the potential future candidate for mayor of Paris will be part of the legacy of the socialist councilor. The man has still not made his candidacy official, but he indicated last week that he wanted to “organize the rally right away, with the district mayors, elected officials and activists.”
The choice of Anne Hidalgo followed by the PS and the left?
If Anne Hidalgo has chosen her foal for the next municipal elections, other contenders from the Socialist Party have made themselves known, including one who was also close to the mayor before a coldness set in between them. It is none other than Emmanuel Grégoire, former first deputy of the mayor of Paris, chosen by the latter in 2014, who became a deputy under the banner of the New Popular Front (NFP) during the last legislative elections. An election which marked the divorce between the two socialists. Unsurprisingly, the Paris councilor did not support the candidate to whom she seems to criticize a weather vane character: “Emmanuel Grégoire made the choice to go to the National Assembly to lead the fight against the extreme right, there will likely be dissolved by the end of 2025. You can't be a candidate for everything.”
The PS will therefore have to choose between at least two candidates if Rémi Féraud actually enters the race for mayor of Paris. And Anne Hidalgo is already calling on her allies to support the senator more than the deputy. She also invites all allies of the left to get behind her: “I hope and hope that environmentalists and communists will rally behind her candidacy from the first round of municipal elections.” But candidates from these political families have already emerged, such as the communist Ian Brossat.
Other left-wing personalities could declare themselves and undermine the idea of a common list of the PS, the PCF and the Ecologists. The rebels, for their part, had not allied themselves with the various left list in 2020. Will the formation of the NFP in recent months change anything? Not sure given the visible signs of fracture within the union. Not sure either, because Rémi Féraud could, like Anne Hidalgo, be opposed to an alliance with LFI.
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