Campaign to Replace Macron Heating Up  09/01 06:27

   

   PARIS (AP) -- With the end of France's summer vacation season, the election 
campaign to replace Emmanuel Macron as president next May is bursting to life.

   An unusually large and broad field of candidates is forming to lead the 
European Union's largest country, its second-largest economy and only 
nuclear-armed power, their appetites whetted by the fact that Macron is 
constitutionally barred from seeking a third consecutive presidential term 
himself.

   Some won't get the support they will need from sponsors and their political 
camps to be on the starting line when the first round of voting is held on 
April 18.

   Still, a crowded field could boost far-right candidate Marine Le Pen -- just 
as it did for Jean-Marie Le Pen, her father, in 2002. The record 16 candidates 
splintered the first-round vote, creating an electoral earthquake when the 
elder Le Pen qualified for the decisive second round.

   Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure became the latest to declare his 
candidacy this weekend. He joined more than two dozen others who say that they 
intend to stand or are contemplating a run in 2027.

   Here's what to know at these early stages of what promises to be among the 
most consequential leadership votes anywhere in the world next year, and which 
comes as France is grappling with multiple challenges, including the 
disruptions of Donald Trump's presidency.

   Polls suggest Le Pen is the candidate to beat

   After decades of trying, first by her father and then her, Marine Le Pen's 
fourth campaign for the French presidency is already shaping up as the 
strongest opportunity for her nationalist, anti-immigration National Rally 
party to take power.

   Such an outcome would rock the European Union, putting a politician who has 
long been hostile to the bloc of 27 nations and many of their collective rules 
and policies in charge of one of the EU's most important countries.

   "It's clearly a crucial election, just because the far right might win this 
one and it never was the case before," said Gilles Ivaldi, a researcher at the 
Paris-based Sciences Po university who specializes in populism and radical 
right-wing politics.

   "With Le Pen as president, we know that the EU will be weakened. To what 
extent we don't know, but we know she's against the EU," he said. "This would 
create a lot of instability."

   Polls have for months suggested that Le Pen is the front-runner and could 
possibly sail into the winner-takes-all runoff on May 2 as the first-round vote 
leader, which would be a first for her. She trailed Macron in the 2017 and 2022 
first-round voting and then lost decisively to him in round two.

   It was a giant upset when her father qualified in 2002 for round two. His 
associations with people who collaborated with France's Nazi occupiers in World 
II and his multiple hate-speech convictions, including Holocaust denial, made 
him anathema to many voters.

   This time, it would a giant upset if his 58-year-old daughter doesn't 
advance. Marine Le Pen has worked for years to distance herself from his 
extremism. She's already begun reaping the fruits at the ballot box: Since 
2024, her National Rally has become the largest party in parliament's powerful 
lower house.

   She got another boost in July when a Paris appeals court cleared her path 
for another presidential campaign, by shortening a ban on seeking elected 
office that a lower court had handed down to Le Pen for embezzlement.

   Behind Le Pen, the picture is uncertain

   With Le Pen widely expected to secure one of the spots in the decisive 
second-round duel, the battle for the other is becoming hard fought, its 
outcome highly uncertain.

   For now, Le Pen's strongest opponents include veteran far-left and 
anti-capitalist firebrand Jean-Luc Mlenchon, who hopes to make his first 
runoff after placing third in 2022 and fourth in 2017 and 2012, and two former 
prime ministers under Macron -- Edouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal, both 
centrists.

   Other prominent possibilities include conservative former Interior Minister 
Bruno Retailleau and multiple figures from the mainstream left, including 
European Parliament lawmaker Raphal Glucksmann and Ecologists leader Marine 
Tondelier, campaigning before the expected birth within weeks of her second 
child.

   Those seven took part in a debate last week at the storied Roland Garros 
tennis arena in Paris. In what served as an unofficial starting gun for the 
campaign, they batted around proposals for fixing some of France's economic 
problems. Some took shots at Le Pen, which she hit back.

   The potential scenario of a Le Pen-Mlenchon second-round duel that polls 
suggest could end with a Le Pen victory could ultimately prompt some candidates 
to drop out, to concentrate votes behind mainstream alternatives.

   "What we don't know is who's going to be against her" in a possible 
second-round matchup, Ivaldi said. "The more the fragmentation, the more the 
chances that Mlenchon will be that person."

   Wars, Trump and Macron's mixed legacy hang over the election

   No French presidential election campaign this century has taken place in 
such choppy waters.

   The Iran war has hit France's stagnating economy with higher energy costs. 
The war in Ukraine has Paris worrying that Russia might next target one of 
France's NATO allies, a potential path to wider conflict.

   Trump's presidency is rattling French faith in the trans-Atlantic alliance. 
The manufacturing and exporting might of China and the artificial intelligence 
revolution are heightening concerns of France being left behind economically 
and technologically.

   But France's mounting and increasingly expensive public debt is narrowing 
the financial room for maneuver that Macron's successor will inherit.

   Many voters also blame Macron for France's woes and took their anger to the 
streets during his two-term presidency.

   Ultimately, the election may hinge on whether voters want to upset the 
established order by propelling Le Pen and Mlenchon into a duel of the right 
and left extremes, or will back a more mainstream candidate, as a possibly 
safer option.

   "It will be quite interesting to see which of these two forces will win in 
the end," Ivaldi said. "These are two different forces, two antagonistic forces 
that are playing against one another."