President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Renaissance party on Tuesday, January 13, endorsed Louis Sarkozy, the 28-year-old son of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, in his mayoral campaign in the French Riviera town of Menton, to the dismay of members who called the news “regrettable,” “incomprehensible,” or, at the very least, “surprising.”

The endorsement was not made by the party’s national nomination committee but by a local branch, in accordance with the party’s rules for towns with fewer than 60,000 residents. Local Renaissance activists and officials said that the younger Sarkozy, who was already backed by right-wing Les Républicains and center-right Horizons, was best positioned to block the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) candidate, MP Alexandra Masson, from taking the town hall. The argument was repeated by a source in the entourage of Renaissance leader Gabriel Attal, who did not oppose the move: “Given the local context, where the RN is increasingly present, Louis Sarkozy is the best-placed candidate to defeat them.”

Nevertheless, the decision shocked some members of Renaissance, given Sarkozy’s divisive profile. In the national nomination committee’s group chat, MP Julie Delpech even questioned whether the news, first reported by Le Figaro, had come from satirical news site Le Gorafi.

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