Senatorial elections in Paris: the right divided again

The Parisian right is reconnecting with its old demons. As the senatorial elections loom, the councillors of Paris may have to decide between two right-wing lists. The first, supported by the boss of the group Changer Paris Rachida Dati and by the party, and a second list that could be led by Agnès Evren, the boss of the LR federation of Paris, who considers to have been excluded from the third place of the official list in a brutal way.

"This list had been validated and a dramatic turn of events, I am excluded," says Agnès Evren. Argument invoked in the entourage of Rachida Dati to explain this about-face: elected officials and councillors would have regretted that no elected representative of the East of Paris is present on the list of senatorial. "But it is always the arrondissements with the most councillors in Paris that are on this list," observes on the contrary another.

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This is not the first time that the senatorial elections have led to divisions within the Parisian right. Already in 2004, the president of the UMP federation himself, the mayor of the fifteenth Philippe Goujon, had presented a dissident list. And in 2011 and 2017 too, the right was divided between several lists.

New twist Friday noon

Friday noon, at the end of the votes designating the grand electors, Agnès Evren was delighted: 16 of her grand electors had been designated to participate in the vote of September. "I needed 13 to make my seat in the Senate," she said. It was without counting on a new twist. A few hours later, the elected LR who lead the official list - Catherine Dumas, Francis Szpiner and Marie-Claire Carrère-Gée - announced to seize the administrative court to cancel the election.

According to the latter, Agnès Evren's husband, seated in the public gallery, overlooked the polling booths and was seen taking pictures. "It is therefore a double attack on the secrecy of the vote and the sincerity of the vote, but also a means of putting pressure on the Councillors of Paris during the voting operations," denounce the three candidates. "My husband didn't take any pictures, he had come to support me," says Agnès Evren.

In the entourage of the mayor (LR) of the VIIth, we try to minimize. "It's pretty traditional. We are not yet at three lists. These elections of internal drumming, we must straddle them. It is not decisive on the elections by direct suffrage, "repeats a member of the entourage of Rachida Dati.