Expats: Sacré bleu!
French citizens in NY vote but hold their noses
Even with 11 candidates to pick from, French voters who lined up to cast ballots at their New York consulate on Saturday were unhappy with the choices in their homeland’s nail-biter presidential election.
“It’s similar to what is going on in the US. Do you want more open borders? Do you want to stay in the European Union?” explained Remi Louvot, 32, a Manhattan resident originally from France’s HauteSavoie region.
French citizens voting at their Fifth Avenue consulate could have picked 48year-old Marine Le Pen, a Donald Trump-like ultranationalist right-winger who is no newcomer: She and her father before her, Jean-Marie Le Pen, have been fixtures in French politics since 1972.
Or they could choose poll-leading, center-left Emmanuel Macron — a 39year-old former Socialist Party leader who, despite his youth, is already a fixture of the country’s political establishment.
Then there’s François Fillon, 63, who was in former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Cabinet. Fillon led the polls until he was scarred by a scandal over a no-show public job for his British wife.
Finally, there’s Jean-Luc Melenchon, 65, another former Socialist who is so far to the left that he would make Bernie Sanders blush.
Two of those four top candidates are expected to face off in a final vote May 7. French pollsters call the race too close to call.
Le Pen is getting the lion’s share of the attention because she’s a lot like Trump.
“She is trying to look similar to him,” said Louvot, a Macron supporter.
“If people were pissed off with the system, they would vote for her or her father,” Louvot added. “I don’t think the majority of people want her. They just don’t want the others.”
Pierre Pacaldi, 32, originally from Toulouse, said President Trump and Le Pen “surf the same wave.”
“That’s a very accurate comparison,” he said. “They are built on the same hopes and fears.”
Olivia Lorraine, a Manhattan resident from Montpellier, in southern France, said before voting that she was undecided — but expected to pick a candidate likely to defeat Le Pen.
“The point is to get her out,” Lorraine said.
National security and the economy were big issues for Isabelle Weisman, 47, a Paris native.
She wouldn’t disclose her choice but said seeing France stay in the European Union was “very important” to her.
A terrorist attack Thursday that left a police officer dead on Paris’ storied Champs-Élysées boulevard seemed like it could help Le Pen. But under French law, no new polls have been released since Thursday night — when, by law, campaigning also ended.
One of Le Pen’s slogans is “Remettre la France en ordre,” or “Put France back in order” — a phrase akin to Trump’s “Make America Great Again.”
Le Pen has a Trump-like platform, too. She is opposed to immigration, takes a zero-tolerance stand on law-and-order issues and wants to curb France’s openness to the rest of Europe.
Trump has not endorsed Le Pen, but in an interview Friday with The Associated Press, he predicted Thursday’s attack would help her.
Trump called her the “strongest on borders,” add- ing, “She’s the strongest on what’s been going on in France.”
Both Le Pen and the leftist Melenchon promise to completely alter France’s relationship with the EU, driving comparisons with the UK’s Brexit.
“The election of either Le Pen or Melenchon would put Paris on a fast-track collision course with [EU officials in] Brussels,” James Shields, a professor of French politics at Aston University in England, told Reuters.
“The election of Marine Le Pen would make Brexit look trivial by comparison.”
Most of the voting takes place Sunday in mainland France. Voters in French overseas territories and foreign countries cast ballots Saturday. France set up five polling stations in New York — four in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn.