Renaud Muselier pronounces his candidacy for the 2026 municipal elections in one of many sectors of Marseille | EUROtoday

“When a politician says never, that means: not right away. » Renaud Muselier knows perfectly the formula that the former mayor (Les Républicains, LR) of Marseille, Jean-Claude Gaudin (died in May), liked to repeat, with a sly smile, of whom he was, for two terms, his first deputy. And he still confirms its correctness.

After spending months telling the press that he would never be a candidate in the 2026 municipal elections in Marseille, the Renaissance president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, 65, announces that he will be head of list in the fourth sector of the city. A territory located in the southern districts, where he votes but where he has never been elected. And which, until 2020, remained the preserve of the Gaudinist right before being conquered by the Marseille Spring, the left-wing, citizen and environmentalist coalition, which has ruled the city since June 2020.

In a letter addressed “to elected officials from the right, from the center and to all those who share [ses] values ​​»revealed Wednesday December 11 by ProvenceRenaud Muselier unveils his municipal strategy in three points. First of all “present a real outreach project” for the second largest metropolis in France. Then “to constitute a dream team » of candidates, in “adding as much as possible” political labels as he does throughout the regional council the place his majority brings collectively a dozen events from the appropriate and the middle.

Finally select “an incarnation” on this “dream team” to develop into mayor of Marseille.
In his letter, Renaud Muselier guarantees it. It will not be this “incarnation”aiming to succeed numerous left-wing mayor Benoît Payan. President of the area till 2028, he assures that he won’t quit one chair for the opposite. But, as a talented connoisseur of the Marseille voting system – we vote in eight sectors and the 101 municipal elected officers appoint the mayor – he is aware of that by becoming a member of the municipal council, nothing will forestall him from working for the place. Again, by no means can imply “not right away.”

“The right and the center must be united”

Renaud Muselier’s popping out takes place in a specific context. In June, the appropriate and the middle misplaced all of their Marseille constituencies within the legislative elections, to the advantage of the National Rally and the Socialist Party. On December 8, The Sunday Journal printed an IFOP survey on future municipal elections in Marseille which confirms this decline. If the latter solely covers a small pattern and solely offers figures for all the metropolis with out making an allowance for the complexity of voting by sector, it predicts that the 2026 election will likely be a duel between the left-wing mayor Benoît Payan and the Bouches-du-Rhône National Rally deputy Franck Allisio.

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