« Get lost, we don’t want you here! » On the Villecresnes market, this Thursday morning, we cannot say that the reception is favorable for Louis Boyard, the LFI deputy leaving the 3e constituency of Val-de-Marne. A resident of the neighborhood, a Jew originally from Tunisia, an Arabic speaker, can no longer stand the complacency of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party with Islamism. To the point that the troublemaker of the amphitheaters, so quick in front of the camera to fuel the confrontation, is forced to make a strategic retreat to the parking lot, surrounded by his square of faithful. All are under 25 years old.
Loïc Signor, the Renaissance candidate, plans to tow on the same market. “Signor?” Who is it ? I do not know him “, retorts Louis Boyard to the JDD. A contempt which corresponds to a strategy: making the central bloc candidate invisible to play the match against the RN. “Signor, he lives up to his name!”finally lets go the former deputy born in 2000, while one of his activists ironizes, taking up the monologue of Louis de Funès in Megalomania : “Signor, he is gold…”.
And when he finally sees his challenger arriving on the market, the knight Boyard, who is not without fear or reproach, sets sail. “He saw me coming so he left”comments Loïc Signor, aware of the maneuver. “He always does that, it’s a way of avoiding the debate”.
Caught between the media weight of the outgoing deputy and the breakthrough of the RN in the European elections, coming first in the constituency with 27.3%, the Renaissance candidate goes into contact with people, pleading a “truth speech” facing candidates who “promise anything”.
“You are our only hope against extremes”, confides a resident, while another, granddaughter of Harkis, spontaneously joins the towing. A passerby, a voter of Raphaël Glucksmann in the European elections, returns to the altercation with Louis Boyard, which he witnessed: ” Who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind “. Disappointed by the excesses of the Insoumis, he announces that he will probably slip a Signor ballot into the ballot box. The reception is rather favorable for the child from Val-de-Marne whose grandmother, a teacher in the working-class neighborhoods, had obtained the medal of the city of Villeneuve-Saint-Georges.
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The “Prime Minister’s Candidate”
Loïc Signor takes care to present himself as the “Prime Minister’s candidate”. What about the President of the Republic? “These are legislative elections, not presidential elections”he evacuates. Practical, at a time when Gabriel Attal’s popularity rating is 15 points higher than that of Emmanuel Macron (41% against 26%, according to our Ifop barometer for the JDD).
Although he recognizes that not everything was done well “, Loïc Signor defends the President of the Republic’s record step by step, in particular the drop in unemployment. On the decision to dissolve, a trader believes that the President could have waited. “It was not so much the result of the European elections that motivated his choice as two years of ungovernability, two years of Louis Boyard,” believes Loïc Signor, throwing a new dig at his opponent Insoumis.
But faced with the man that some observers have nicknamed “the Ducobu student”, the Renaissance spokesperson is not the only one playing the appeasement card. Arnaud Barbotin, the candidate of the National Union, from Éric Ciotti’s quota in his alliance with the RN, is calling for reconciliation. “I try to get out of the logic of confrontation”this business leader specializing in VSE-SME subjects told JDD. “People aspire to lead a peaceful life, to work, and to make a living from their work. »
“Is Macron’s rejection real? »
“The rejection of Louis Boyard is real. Is Macron’s rejection real? I’m not so sure “, estimates Loïc Signor at the end of the day, during an open-air meeting. Faced with the divisive inventor of the “Blockade challenge” on Tik Tok, it is the race for the one who, between the candidate of Attal and that of Bardella, will arouse the least “rejection”. And on this point, many voters are still hesitant. “I will vote Signor against Boyard”confides a local observer who came to listen to the Renaissance candidate. Why not Arnaud Barbotin, the RN-LR candidate? Answer: “I don’t know him, he is less identified, less established”.
Boyard, an “agent of chaos”
At the open-air meeting, Laurent Saint-Martin, who came to support, drove the point home, calling for not “give back the keys to a deputy who shames the constituency”, and “agent du chaos”.
Just like the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, who came specially to speak to this small committee (see box), to remind them of the importance of this fight “against both extremes”, and particularly against “Louis Boyard who, like the mayor of Paris, refuses video surveillance cameras in the streets.”
Will Louis Boyard be perceived by the voters of the constituency as the great threat against which to block?
