Is Paris Turning?

The two men are as different as Laurel and Hardy. Conservative Philippe Séguin, 57, is corpulent and earthy, with a resonant bass voice and an addiction to unfiltered Gitanes. Socialist Bertrand Delanoë, 50, an avowed homosexual, is soft-spoken and ascetic-looking with a gift for irony and a penchant for slim cigarillos. Séguin, a former Minister of Labor and ex-president of the National Assembly, is a man of national ambitions who dreams of occupying the Elysée Palace. Delanoë, apart from one term in Parliament, has spent his entire political career as a party activist and Paris city councilman. But the men have one thing in common: they want to become mayor of the French capital.

When voters go to the polls on March 11 and 18 to elect municipal officials in 36,000 cities, towns, villages and hamlets, local issues and personalities will largely sway their choices. But once the ballots are totted up, the results will be viewed as a key barometer of next year's legislative and presidential elections. And though the local contests have no direct bearing on national politics, their outcomes will inevitably affect the tug-of-war between Gaullist President Jacques Chirac and Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, likely rivals in the May 2002 presidential race.

Though neither side seems poised to land a killer blow, the latest polls bear troubling news for the conservatives. Longtime rightist bastions like Lyons and Toulouse could fall to the Socialists and their allies, and the left seems likely to retain fiefdoms like Strasbourg, Rennes and Lille. Though conservatives still retain a solid grip on Marseilles and Bordeaux, Delanoë's Socialist-led ticket looks set to wrest Paris away from the Gaullists for the first time in 24 years.

The right's fate in Paris, Chirac's personal fiefdom from 1977 until his presidential victory in 1995, owes more to conservative blunders than to Delanoë's prowess on the hustings. Its problems are rooted in Chirac's choice of Jean Tiberi, a loyal but mediocre lieutenant, as his successor in 1995. "It was a terrible mistake," an official of the Gaullist Rally for the Republic (rpr) party now admits. "It became immediately apparent that Tiberi had no breadth, that he was a pathetic puppet who knew nothing about the world. We put Forrest Gump in the mayor's chair."

Worse, Tiberi was soon mired in multiple scandals ranging from irregularities in awarding public works contracts to the placing of fictitious names on the city's voting rolls. But probably nothing did more to damage Tiberi's image than the $30,000 his wife Xavière was paid by a local government agency for a 36-page report, full of misspellings, on a subject she knew virtually nothing about. Indicted and tried for fraud, Xavière Tiberi got off on a technicality and has paid the money back.

The embattled mayor fought off an attempted putsch in 1998 and announced he would run for re-election as an independent after the rpr excommunicated him last October. As Chirac tried to distance himself from his troublesome successor, Tiberi often hinted that he would reveal details of financial hanky-panky during Chirac's tenure as mayor. "Tiberi portrays himself as a victim," says Pascal Perrineau, director of the Center of French Political Life, "but he is the one who is making the right lose Paris. He incarnates the worst of the municipal system—corruption, influence-peddling, mediocrity and nepotism."

Hoping to marginalize Tiberi, the Gaullists gave their official nod to Séguin. A formidable orator and political heavyweight, he had high popularity ratings and experience as a former minister and mayor of the eastern city of Epinal. "Séguin seemed like a sure thing," sighs a rpr official. "But his candidacy never caught fire."

Séguin faced multiple problems: Tiberi's "dissident" candidacy, public lassitude after nearly a quarter-century of Gaullist rule, voter disgust over allegations of corruption going back to Chirac's days as mayor and, not least, the charge that Séguin was a parachuté—a carpetbagger brought in from the outside. To make matters worse, he has run a lackluster race marked by baffling tactical shifts. By contrast, Delanoë's low-key campaign, boosted by the national popularity of the Socialist-led government, has the wind at its back.

The difference between the two campaigns is immediately apparent at street level. On an outing in Paris' fashionable first arrondissement last week, Séguin wound up having coffee in a local bistro with fellow rpr candidates. Looking tired and downcast, he fiddled quietly with a silver lighter as his colleagues talked bravely about how "our message is finally getting through." On the same day Delanoë, accompanied by Education Minister Jack Lang and Interior Minister Daniel Vaillant, strolled triumphantly through the poor but bustling 18th arrondissement surrounded by journalists and well-wishers. "Paris needs an alternative," he said, "and we offer positive reasons for it with a program drawn up with the Parisians themselves based on their current dissatisfactions and their hopes for the future."

In fact, both Delanoë and Séguin promise to fight pollution and crime, improve schools and reduce taxes. At a press lunch last week, Séguin acknowledged the similarities but insisted that the real question was which candidate had "the capacity to put his promises into effect." As to his election chances, Séguin admitted he was "not in a comfortable situation" but predicted a "crystallization" of support in the final weeks. "If we don't win," he added with disarming candor, "the media and public opinion will see it as a sign of weakness as we approach the presidential vote—especially since the name of the President is so closely linked to the problems of Paris."

Political analysts caution against assuming that local leftist gains will automatically translate into a Jospin victory in 2002. "If Paris and Lyons go left, people will talk only of that," says Perrineau. "But beware of that interpretation: Paris and Lyons are not France, and Jacques Chirac is far from dead." One possible result of a rightist debacle could be to jolt the divided conservative parties to unite behind Chirac next year. "Today," says Perrineau, "the only man who can bridge the divisions on the right is Chirac. He has the capacity to emerge as the great unifier." But if the war is not lost for Chirac, the battle for Paris will weigh heavily on his chances.