The Head of State is waiting to declare his candidacy, his party has already started the donation hunt. To complement its budget, it targets both small contributors and great patrons. But these are more reluctant than in 2017.
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The blue and white letters stand out on a red background, next to the silhouette of Emmanuel Macron: “Five years more with your donations.” In recent weeks, the Republic in March (LRM) has published a tract at Destination of its sponsors for the presidential election of 2022. “You were already 100,000 donors in 2017, for 2022, we count on you!”, Is it written on the document.
It does not matter that the head of state has not yet declared a candidate for his re-election. A campaign is not improvised. And even less a fundraiser.
The presidential party is looking for 5 million euros to complete its campaign budget, on the 22.5 million expenditure authorized by the State for a qualified candidate in the second round. About 10 million euros will be funded by bank loan, and 7 other million on the LRM equity, which benefits, like all political parties, of public funding indexed to its results in the last legislative elections. It is therefore missing 5 million euros. “We have never charged the memberships, the fundraising is needed,” says the hon. Member for Val-de-Marne Laurent Saint-Martin, Treasurer of LRM.
The stake is more political than it seems. As well in terms of display – to gear a large number of donations, including symbolic, allows to display a dynamic for the candidate – than in the competition to hang big donors, these millionaires or billionaires by hand generous. In this area, the “walkers” do mostly the race with the Party the Republicans (LR).
Lower ambitions
In 2016, Nicolas Sarkozy, then candidate for the primary of the right, thus desolate his relatives that his friend, the billionaire of luxury, Bernard Arnault, refuses to get his hand to the portfolio to support him. The CEO of LVMH had no eyes, “he believed at the time, that for Emmanuel Macron.
Former Minister of the Economy, launched to the conquest of power without a real political party, had harvested 14 million euros of donations to finance his campaign. A largely obtained sum with rich patrons, which can give up to € 7,500, the maximum ceiling authorized by the law for donations to political parties (this ceiling is 4,600 euros for donations to the funding association of the campaign of a candidate). Mr. Macron had multiplied, with events organized with the French communities of London, New York or Beirut. According to a world survey, published in 2019, more than 7 million euros had been harvested through only 1,100 donations.
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