FRANCE/FILE: High stakes in Paris race to be first "Madame Mayor"

Record ID: 516160

  • Title: FRANCE/FILE: High stakes in Paris race to be first "Madame Mayor"
  • Date: 21st March 2014
  • Summary: PARIS, FRANCE (FILE - NOVEMBER 2010) (REUTERS) THEN ECOLOGY MINISTER KOSCIUSKO-MORIZET ARRIVING AT THE ELYSEE PALACE PARIS, FRANCE (FILE - JUNE 2011) (REUTERS) THEN ECOLOGY MINISTER KOSCIUSKO-MORIZET ARRIVING AT THE ORGANISATION OF ECONOMIC COOPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT (OECD) HEADQUARTERS KOSCIUSKO-MORIZET AT CONFERENCE ON SAFETY TESTS FOLLOWING FUKUSHIMA DISASTER IN JAPA
  • Embargoed: 5th April 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France
  • Country: France
  • Topics: General,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA9WM5YR75WS13NKSQSNZ25BW9K
  • Story Text: Paris will go to the polls on Sunday (March 23) for a first round of voting to elect a new mayor who will very likely be the first woman at the head of the French capital -- either a businesslike Socialist with a fat contacts book and an army of volunteers, or a youthful conservative with Botticelli hair and penchant for playing the harp.
    Both want to reinvigorate the "City of Light" as a dynamic international rival to London or New York, while fixing local gripes about housing shortages and snarled traffic.
    A heated campaign has been marked, however, by personal finger-pointing between City Hall insider Anne Hidalgo, deputy to the incumbent, and fiery challenger Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, a protegee of former President Nicolas Sarkozy.
    Hidalgo, 54, has since 2001 been the unflappable deputy to outgoing mayor Bertrand Delanoe. Kosciusko-Morizet, 40, is best known as spokeswoman for Sarkozy during a failed re-election campaign in 2012.
    For a nation whose politics remain arguably more dominated by men than some of its neighbours, the novelty of two women at war for the French capital has attracted plenty of attention in the public and media.
    But in either likely case that one of them wins to become the first ever woman to run Paris and first to hold the mayoral post created in its present form in 1977, it will be a good thing for the city's image said Frederic Dabi of IFOP, a polling agency.
    "One was called a star, the other was called the concierge in a very derogatory way. There have been a series of mediatised scenarios about the presence of two women. In any case it is a good thing in terms of originality and reputation for Paris, that a woman will be mayor of Paris, on the evening of March 30 or rather the following week," Dabi told Reuters Television.
    The low ratings of Socialist President Francois Hollande could hurt Hidalgo. But polls show her ahead, aided by the popularity of her local boss at City Hall.
    The Spanish-born daughter of immigrants casts herself as a safe pair of hands who will continue the legacy of Delanoe -- his municipal bike-sharing service, a beachfront created each August on the banks of the Seine and spending on the arts have been hits with the city's moneyed "bobos" - bourgeois bohemians.
    "I hope the Parisians choose progress and humanism over conservatism and regress," Hidalgo said during a campaign event in Paris, referring to herself as "progressive" and her right-wing rival Kosciousko-Morizet as "conservative".
    But away from the boulevards, charming cafes and scenic bridges lie big-city problems. A housing shortage is worsened by wealthy foreign buyers and a tenth of apartments left vacant by landlords who complain tenants' rights are too generous.
    Though the mayor has no power beyond the line of 19th-century city walls into suburbs that are home to a further 6 million, problems expected to be tackled will include rising rents, a transport system struggling to serve poor outlying areas and a brain drain that has seen the city's brightest financial and creative minds head to London for work.
    This is the legacy Kosciusko-Morizet wants to exploit.
    A member of Sarkozy's UMP party whose public recognition factor is enough for her to be known by her initials "NKM", the candidate casts herself as a champion of the middle class who will tackle crime, let shops open on Sundays, extend hours on the Metro and put a roof over the noisy orbital motorway, the "Boulevard Peripherique", which divides Paris from the suburbs.
    Her goal is "to put (Paris) in the race for becoming one of the greatest cities in the world, to take risks to create jobs, take risks to innovate, take risks so that Parisians have better lives. Me, I haven't inherited any electoral districts, me, I don't have an ever-present mentor, me, I take risks," she told a campaign event in Paris last week.
    And by reminding voters of national issues like rising taxes and unemployment that have plunged Hollande's approval ratings to record lows, Kosciusko-Morizet could benefit from broader disillusionment with the Socialist party.
    Latest polls have shown Hidalgo's left-wing coalition list securing 53 percent in a second-round, head-to-head runoff against Kosciusko-Morizet's list who would get 47 percent.
    The mayor herself will be chosen by the 163 city council members elected from local party lists in Paris's 20 arrondissements, or districts.
    Six-yearly elections in Paris and France's 37,000 other municipalities will be held in two rounds on March 23 and 30.
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