Following the dissolution of the Assembly, will Laurent Wauquiez decide to run for the legislative elections to launch his conquest of the executive sooner than expected? If this is the case, he would have to leave his mandate as president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.
At the end of last week, two days before the surprise dissolution of Emmanuel Macron, a close friend of Laurent Wauquiez confided that the latter would probably not give a boost before the start of the school year in September and his traditional climb of Mont Mézenc, at him in Haute-Loire.
But since Sunday evening, everything has changed, including for the man who has the ambition to be elected President of the Republic in 2027. Are the legislative elections of June 30 and July 7 not an opportunity for him to take the leadership of the right and the center and to “close the parenthesis of Macronism” faster than expected, as he announced on the social network X on Sunday evening? And in this case, shouldn’t we go through the legislative box? Those around him, at the Regional Council, say they know nothing about his intentions or do not want to make comments. We will quickly have the answer, the deadline for submitting applications is Friday.
Why Laurent Wauquiez (LR) is not going to the legislative elections… but a little all the same (June 2022)
If Laurent Wauquiez decides to run for the legislative elections, it should be a formality for him, even if, as elsewhere, the RN came first in its department of Haute-Loire on Sunday. In 2022, he was in fact a substitute candidate for Isabelle Valentin and the ticket obtained 45.69% of the votes in the first round, 70.22% in the second. This substitute position allowed him to remain in ambush: he could have become a deputy at any time between now and 2027, by asking Isabelle Valentin to resign.
“Will he have the courage to take risks?”
Today, Does Laurent Wauquiez have an interest in running, this time, as an incumbent deputy? Or should he wait a little longer to enter the campaign, as some close friends advise him, in order to avoid throwing himself into the media wringer? “At some point, he will have to take risks. But will he have the courage?”, jokes an opponent of the Region. Choosing to be a deputy would, however, require him to abandon his seat as regional president, which he uses as a platform to show the solutions (budgetary, economic, security) that he thinks are the right ones for France.
Since the beginning of 2016 when he has been president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, the rumor of his candidacy has circulated in each election: in the legislative elections of 2017, in the municipal elections of 2020 (in Lyon and Le Puy), in the legislative elections of 2022 and now to those of 2024. Each time, he let the noise spread, to increase desire within his camp. And to better say, in the end, that he had been elected for a mandate and that it would serve its term. But since Sunday evening, everything has changed.
Laurent Bernard
