For twenty years, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan had dominated in the first round in the 8th district of Essonne. Until 2017, the year when the ex-mayor of Yerres (Essonne) had been jostled by the score of the candidate of La République en Marche Antoine Pavamani, who had taken the lead on the evening of the first round, before the outgoing deputy manages to save his constituency by obtaining 52.05% of the votes in the second round. Sunday, June 12, Mr. Dupont-Aignan gathered 33.34% of the votes, finishing first this time. He will face, in a favorable ballot, the candidate of the New People’s Ecological and Social Union (Nupes), Emilie Chazette-Guillet (30.50%), in the second round on Sunday June 19 to try to keep his constituency.
For his third candidacy for a presidential election, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan had gathered 2.06% of the votes in the first round, Sunday April 10, and therefore more than halved his 2017 score (4.7%). On the evening of his defeat he had asked his voters “to do everything to avoid the disappearance of France with Emmanuel Macron”. “For my part, said the president of Debout la France, I call to vote and I will vote Marine Le Pen,” he said before posting a quote from Charles de Gaulle on Twitter, “Let’s be firm, pure and faithful ; at the end of our pains, there is the greatest glory in the world, that of the men who have not given in. »
Sanitary antipass and vaccination pass
In 2021, the party of Nicolas Dupont-Aignan experienced a severe hemorrhage. He acknowledged lip service to “twenty-five starts.” In reality, 134 of its executives joined Marine Le Pen on March 22, 2021, including Mr. Dupont-Aignan’s deputy in the Assembly, his vice-president, his general manager and a number of departmental officials.
Claiming to be Gaullist, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan defends a sovereignist and Eurosceptic line. A member of the RPR (the ancestor of the Les Républicains party), he was elected mayor of Yerres for the first time in 1995. Against a background of disagreement with Nicolas Sarkozy, he founded his own movement, Debout la République, in 2008 to obtain 1.79% of the votes in 2012 during his first presidential candidacy. He renamed his movement Debout la France (DLF) in 2014.
During the presidential campaign, the elected representative of Essonne intended to multiply the referendums, on Europe, immigration, school, justice, secularism, and even to impose a “revocatory referendum”. In 2021, he ardently campaigned against the health pass and the vaccine pass, alongside Florian Philippot, who joined him, for “vaccination freedom”.
Controversies
In March, Mr. Philippot praised the existence of an “agreement” with Debout la France in view of the legislative elections and claimed that Nicolas Dupont-Aignan’s presidential program would be “enriched” by the “holding of a referendum on France’s membership of the European Union”. While Florian Philippot was in favor of France’s exit from the European Union, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan wanted to replace the latter, “destroying our democracy”, with a “community of free nations”. The two men also proposed to prohibit any confinement in the Constitution.
During the presidential campaign, the 61-year-old deputy had tried to stir up several controversies to draw attention to his candidacy, in particular by denouncing a “rigged” election. He criticized a “certain instrumentalization of the Ukrainian drama”, which allowed, according to him, to eclipse the presidential campaign.
“There was the fear of Covid – lies, manipulation, attacks on freedoms in our country – and now there is a certain instrumentalization of the Ukrainian drama so that the French look away from Emmanuel Macron’s record, from the candidates’ proposals “, had asserted the far-right candidate on the set of France 2, on March 2. On the subject of the war in Ukraine, the sovereigntist candidate denounced the sanctions taken by the European Union against Russia, which are, according to him, only “gesticulations”.
