FILE- This Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015 shows French far-right National Front Party leader, Marine Le Pen, left, greeting National Front regional leader for southeastern France, Marion Marechal-Le Pen, after a meeting in Par…
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Notably, the National Front tends to perform better in the regions hardest hit by France’s economic crisis.
She is the youngest lawmaker that is French and in an election this weekend could become the youngest president of an area that is strong.
The regional vote is the first since a reform that redrew boundaries to create 13 larger regions from 22 smaller ones before.
Marine Le Pen, a candidate for president of the northern region, went on the offensive three days before Sunday’s elections, and a day after a poll suggested she may lose.
It turned out to be a deft move – and now nothing is guaranteed.
The Socialists came in an embarrassing third place in the nationwide vote in the first round, though polls suggest they could win back a bit of support in the runoff. “This division may lead to civil war, and there is another vision which is that of the Republic and its values, which are for unity”.
In the meantime, the golden girl with long blonde locks running in southern France appears undaunted by the task.
Le Pen is known for her own provocative statements about “illegals” and Islam.
Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls has called the FN a “fraud” that wants to return France to the “wars of religion” and said he had “no hesitation” in urging voters to back the Republicans to keep the FN from power – as they did in 2002 when voters switched to Jacques Chirac in a presidential run-off against Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Despite their family ties and far-right bent, much separates the two Le Pen women, from political messages to personality to style. The way you’re supposed to play the game is with formally neutral policy initiatives – something like a ban on Syrian refugees or on wearing religious attire in school – that happen to target Muslim populations.
Marine Le Pen, 47, has worked to scrub away the stigma from a party that for decades has been a political pariah.
At the other end of the country, in the sun-kissed Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region, her 26-year-old niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen was shown trailing the Republicans’ Christian Estroi, with 46 percent to his 54 percent.
“We are supporters of… republican assimilation that makes of the French of all origins members of one community, the national community”, she said.
The French model “has been abandoned in favor of the multicultural ideal, a kind of right to be different that I profoundly believe contributes to the French fracture”, she said.
At a final rally, Le Pen underscored the national character of the regional vote, telling cheering supporters that a new France is within their grasp and inside the ballot box.
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Once regarded as a radical fringe party, the National Front has been riding a wave of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-establishment sentiment and has made steady gains in recent years.
