Macron’s pick for mayor vows to fight on after first-round failure

THE all-female race to be mayor of Paris sparked back into life yesterday after Emmanuel Macron’s beleaguered candidate quashed suggestions she would pull out after coming a distant third in the first round of the three-way battle.

After a campaign so far wracked by mud-slinging and gaffes, Agnès Buzyn, told nervous supporters she was “fully committed, determined, combative” to go into the second round against Socialist incumbent Anne Hidalgo and her Right-wing rival Rachida Dati.

The first round of municipal elections in Paris and France’s 35,000-odd cities, towns and villages took place on March 15 with the run-off due the following Sunday. But just two days after the first round, the country went into lockdown. The run-off will now take place on June 28 bar a fresh viral surge.

Ms Buzyn had given up her post as France’s health minister to step in as replacement runner for Mr Macron’s

LREM party after the shock withdrawal of its official candidate, Benjamin Griveaux, over the release of a sex tape the married man had sent to a lover.

She fell well short of her two main rivals, taking 17.3 per cent of the vote while Ms Hidalgo came first on 29.3 per cent, ahead of Ms Dati, on 22.7 per cent.

She then infuriated Mr Macron by telling Le Monde she had warned the president that the first round was a “masquerade” that should never have gone ahead given the viral “tsunami” around the corner. One minister told Le Figaro her remarks were “disgraceful”. One source from her campaign said: “She’s a grenade without a pin.”

The two front-runners both hope to poach despondent Macron voters who sense the cause is lost. Even her backers have said Ms Buzyn’s bid is a “suicide mission”.

Ms Dati has made peace with dissident figures from her camp and casts herself as the only viable alternative to Ms Hidalgo. Her Socialist rival was rejected by 70 per cent of Parisians in round one unhappy with her record on grime, crime and transport, and was inaudible during lockdown, she claims.

Ms Hidalgo insists the Dati camp is beyond the pale for Parisian “bobos” (bourgeois-bohemians) and she is training fire on the Macron government, which has denied her demands to reopen the capital’s parks as lockdown is eased. She is expected to forge an alliance with the Greens to claim the right to run the capital for another six years.

“We’re returning to a classic Leftright clash,” Pierre Auriacombe, LREM candidate in the 16th arrondissement, told Libération. “Everything Macronism wanted to build is collapsing.”

‘We’re returning to a classic Left-right clash. Everything Macronism wanted to build is collapsing’