Le Pen draws cheers in Macron’s hometown, and he receives boos
PARIS — France’s presidential contest moved on Wednesday to an unlikely arena: a tumble dryer factory in the country’s north where, if the far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, did not quite humiliate her rival, Emmanuel Macron, she sure upstaged him.
Workers at the plant, run by Whirlpool in Macron’s hometown, Amiens, have been striking to prevent the factory from closing. Far from being welcomed as a favored son, Macron was jeered and booed by a hostile crowd as tires burned, while Le Pen paid a surprise visit and was greeted with hugs and selfies as activists with her National Front party distributed croissants.
Their separate visits, covered live on French television, showed how Le Pen’s anti-globalization message resonates in regions struggling with factory closings and the loss of jobs, as well as the hostility that many workers feel for Macron, a centrist former investment banker who wants to loosen labor rules.
Studies in contrast
The contrasting styles, policy approaches and loyalties of the candidates, who face each other in a runoff election on May 7, were on full display in Amiens.
Macron met first with a few union representatives from the factory at the local chamber of commerce; Le Pen beat him to the plant itself.
Macron said that he could not stop companies from firing workers, but that he would fight to find a buyer for the plant or to retrain workers. Le Pen promised to save the plant and the nearly 300 jobs there that are supposed to be shifted to Poland next year. She said she would discourage companies from moving jobs abroad with a 35 percent tax on any products imported from plants that are outsourced from France.
One of Macron’s supporters, the writer and economist Jacques Attali, said in an interview on French television that the case of the Whirlpool factory was an “anecdote,” meaning a detail in the wider context of France’s economy.
“The president of the Republic isn’t here to fix every individual case,” Attali said.
Of course, it was no detail to the people who work there, and campaign officials for Macron had to scramble to distance themselves from the comments.
It was just one example of how Macron, 39, who has never held elected office and is running against a political veteran, was on the back foot all day.
Le Pen, 48, praised the Whirlpool workers for “resisting this wild globalization,” and, taking a page out of the populist playbook of President Donald Trump, she promised that the plant would not close if she were elected.
“When I heard that Emmanuel Macron was coming here and that he didn’t plan to meet the workers, that he didn’t plan to come to the picket line, but that he was going to shelter in some room at the chamber of commerce to meet two or three hand-picked people, I considered that it was such a sign of contempt for what the Whirlpool workers are going through that I decided to leave my strategic council and come see you,” Le Pen said at the site.
‘A political use’
Macron, speaking at a news conference after meeting with the union representatives, shot back that Le Pen would fix “nothing” if elected, arguing that her protectionist proposals would destroy more jobs and that she was “making a political use” of the Whirlpool workers.
Macron finished ahead in the first round of the presidential election on Sunday, with 24 percent of the vote versus 21.3 percent for Le Pen, and polls still predict that he will beat her in the second round.
But his campaign for the runoff has gotten off to a shaky start, with critics saying he celebrated too early and returned to the campaign trail too late.