At first glance, this is not exactly what he had imagined.
Appointed regional campaign director by the National Rally (RN) last September, Jordan Bardella did not imagine having to descend into the arena himself.
What is more, in the most difficult - not to say impossible - region to switch under the banner of Marine Le Pen.
And yet.
The vice-president of the RN formalized, this Monday, March 1 at the microphone of RTL, his candidacy as head of the list in Île-de-France for the elections next June.
“Yes, I will be a candidate.
It's my region, I grew up in a city of Seine-Saint-Denis,
assured the microphone of Alba Ventura the MEP RN.
There is a symbolic stake because the Île de France is the symbol of this ultraviolence which plagues the country. ”
Read also: Regional: high-risk elections for LREM
A change of foot matured in the fall, as revealed by
Le Figaro
, dictated by two imperatives.
To avoid the dark scenario of the last municipal elections, first of all.
The depoliticization of the ballot, against the backdrop of the health crisis, led to a record abstention.
Particularly in the RN electorate, causing major setbacks for the Nationalist Party to the benefit, very often, of the teams in place.
A
“bonus for graduates”
that the National Rally hopes to thwart this summer by nationalizing the campaign as much as possible.
The RN wants to make the next regional not a sum of local battles, but
"the aperitif of the presidential",
as Bardella himself regularly repeats.
This requires for the movement that a maximum of leading executives, and with strong media resonance, get involved.
In the absence this time of a candidacy from Marine Le Pen, the victorious leader of the last Europeans had no choice but to get started.
All the more so in Île-de-France, a
“capital region”
which captures more journalistic attention than any other.
To read also: Nicolas Bay: "Our objective is to gain regions"
The second reason is sociological.
With Paris and its inner suburbs, the Île-de-France region has a high proportion of senior executives, retirees and wealthy people.
This could explain the modest scores that the RN has traditionally recorded there.
In 2015, during the last regional, the head of the list of the party to the flame, Wallerand de Saint-Just, had collected 18% in the first round.
But with a view to the presidential election, it is also to these new categories of the population that the flame party intends to address.
Not to rally them to him - the bet seems complicated - but at least to mitigate its hostility.
In particular, thanks to the new smooth speech of Marine Le Pen.
"With a view to 2022, it is more interesting for us to gain one or two points in Île-de-France than five in Cantal",
summarizes a leader of the movement.
Here again, to have a chance to succeed in his bet, the RN had to invest a heavyweight.
Outgoing regional councilor, Jordan Bardella began to campaign in Drancy, in Seine-Saint-Denis.
It has the advantage of already having a foot.
The fact remains that this candidacy underlines, in spite of itself, one of the most important weaknesses of the National Gathering: its poverty within a large framework.
In an interview with
Figaro
, Jordan Bardella announced on September 3, 2020 about the regional:
“I will not be a candidate.
It is characteristic of small parties that the same are systematically candidates for everything.
Today we want to bring out new figures and give others the chance that was given to me during the Europeans. ”
In 2015, Marine Le Pen led the battle in Hauts-de-France, Marion Maréchal in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur and Florian Philippot in the Grand Est.
Their absence this year will have finally dictated to Jordan Bardella his decision to go.
