Laurent Wauquiez knows it: he has never been so desired within his political family.
For weeks, many have urged him to run for the presidency of LR next fall.
In a party traumatized by the failure in the presidential election and lacking leaders, even some of its former critics, like Senator Bruno Retailleau, want it.
Or rather wanted to.
Because the answer is negative.
The president of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, who thought long and decided during the week, formalized that he would not be a candidate for the presidency of LR in a long message published on his social networks this Sunday, July 17 In the evening.
“We have to distance ourselves from the political fight, because today we no longer find any answer to it, because the play of short phrases and sterile polemics no longer allows the voice of the French to be heard.
It is this mediocrity that has led the country to the state it is today.
All of this pulls us down.
The solution will come from a break with what has become of politics,” writes Laurent Wauquiez in a text in which, paradoxically, he in no way renounces his ambitions.
"The alternative we must build must go beyond questions of devices"
If the herald of the social and identity right renounces a candidacy via a message on the web for the second time in less than a year (the last time was on August 26 to announce that he would not start the race at the Élysée), he keeps the next presidential election in his sights more than ever.
“The alternative that we must build must go beyond questions of apparatus, work with personalities with different backgrounds, rub one's brains with all those who want to get this start, wherever they come from.
You have to look for new ideas, have time to prepare.
(…)
I am convinced that this is the only way that will make it possible to meet the great democratic choice of 2027”, he writes again.
Why I'm choosing not to run for Republican President: https://t.co/kpWdh9qLus
— Laurent Wauquiez (@laurentwauquiez) July 17, 2022
“We need to build a new political offer that goes beyond parties.
The time is at a great listening time for the French which is not compatible with the presidency of LR”, explains his entourage, for whom Laurent Wauquiez thus intends to keep “his freedom of tone and action”.
From September, the elected official will begin a long series of trips throughout the country to meet the French, the "invisible" in particular, with the false air of a presidential pre-campaign.
At the end of 2021, without media, Laurent Wauquiez had already traveled to Moselle with MP Fabien Di Filippo, one of his relatives, to meet employees of a laundry cleaning company.
"LR is the right of yesterday", explained in May one of his faithful
Unlike Xavier Bertrand who left the party in December 2017 (the day after the election of Laurent Wauquiez as president of the Republicans), the president of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes takes care to stay at LR which he will continue to participate in proceedings.
A way not to insult the future.
But his choice not to run for the presidency, when he was almost certain to win hands down at the next Congress, demonstrates his conviction that this party, demonetized by its successive failures, is not the sufficient tool to embody a new political offer.
"LR is yesterday's right," whispered one of his followers last May.
Not taking over the reins of the party also makes it possible not to reproduce the unsuccessful scenario of 2017: after being elected president, Laurent Wauquiez, accountant of the defeat in the 2019 Europeans, had been forced to resign.
His posture of patience and listening also allows him to cultivate an image of a reasonable politician and to try to break definitively with his reputation as an impatient person devoured by his ambition, from which he has suffered a lot in the past.
Sunday afternoon, Laurent Wauquiez made calls to warn the tenors of his political family, including Nicolas Sarkozy, of his decision.
He has not yet chosen who he would support for the presidency of LR.
“If he does not go, it will be the ball of candidacies and ambitions”, gritted his teeth last week a party oil.
