In this rural department, executives of the PS and activists are convinced that the candidate of the party to the presidential elections has all his chances to access the second round, and even win the ballot.
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The Aiege Socialists, who have just started their fieldwork for the presidential election, have a foolishness. Certainly, the party is still flawed and his candidate, Anne Hidalgo, who no longer ceases to revive his campaign, fails to take off in polls. But, “we are not pessimistic at all,” Tranche Marion Bousquet, 35, general secretary of the theoretical and experimental ecology station of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Moulis. The young woman shows a package of leaflets, placed on a piece of furniture in his kitchen, and the posters against the fridge. She just received them. “We are motivated! This weekend, we are on the markets …” she announces.
Do they have morale? “Oh yes, no worries !, Daniel Belondrade, 64 years old. When we are militant, we must have morale, we have no choice.” Objective: the second round. “I believe in his qualification for the second round,” confirms Jean-Christophe Bonrepaux, Federal Secretary of the Socialist Party (PS) in Ariège, recalling that “the bar is at 16%”. And it is convinced of it: the fact that one draws “red balls on it” is that it is seen as “a dangerous candidate”. Marion Bousquet is even “sure she can be in the second round”.
Activists broom critics on Anne Hidalgo’s personality. “No, no problem, considers Christian Barbandiere. Now that she is launched, she will be good. It’s a diesel. But do not tell the ecolos …” Dareful videos mucking on social networks, critics on his lack eloquence or charisma? “She has good debators, believes Mr. Bonrepaux. She will flourish in this campaign.” Activists mostly see the proof of an ambient sexism. “Once again, Upders Guillaume Soffiatti, we are more demanding with a woman than with a man. She pays that. Ségolène Royal, his first defect, it was to be a woman.”
“I preferred the Foll”
The Ariège, for the PS, is a historical bastion, even if it lost, in 2017, the two deputy seats for the benefit of France unsuitable. It is also a rural department, sometimes enlarged in narrow valleys by going to Spain. Martine Froger, 60, works in the ecomuseum of Alzen, perched on a mountain, between Saint-Girons and Foix. She recognizes without sank, that “at the beginning” she was “not packaged” by Anne Hidalgo. “I preferred the Foll,” she explains. He has more charisma and knows better rurality. That’s what matters to me: to defend rurality in Paris. “And then, this” big fan “of François Hollande found that the candidate “was surrounded by people who know rurality”. So, “I came back on my first impressions, she admits. We will all be behind her”. Being mayor of Paris will not be a handicap, want to believe the active activists. And, anyway, said by sighing Guillaume Soffiatti, “she would have been rurally, we would have fun of her accent.”
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