Showdown on French Riviera reveals the far right’s potential path to power

NICE, France — The story of the far right’s probable victory in the French Riviera’s capital will probably be remembered largely because of an incident involving a pig’s head.

But the race in Nice is also set to have broader implications ahead of France’s presidential election in 2027, reviving debate over whether the country’s weakened, traditional conservatives could ultimately merge forces with the far-right National Rally party of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella.

A candidate allied with the anti-immigration National Rally is on track to become mayor of France’s fifth most populous city, famed for its sweeping, palm-lined Mediterranean beachfront.

Eric Ciotti, 60, led the first round with 43.4 percent of the vote. The incumbent mayor, Christian Estrosi, a former industry minister under former right-wing President Nicolas Sarkozy, scored just over 30 percent and now faces a battle to claw his way back in Sunday’s runoff.

“The people of Nice have expressed a desire to turn the page … The time for change has come,” a triumphant Ciotti said after the first-round vote. His lead was fueled by local rivalries, scandal and a feud with Estrosi that stretches back decades.

The campaign took an ugly turn when a pig’s head, alongside a printed slur and a Star of David, was tied to the gate of Estrosi’s home — seen as a particularly gratuitous attack since his wife is Jewish.

The case has now become even murkier. Estrosi initially blamed political opponents, but investigators are now exploring whether people within his own camp may have orchestrated the crime, the prosecutor said this month. Two arrests were made. Estrosi says he is the victim of “manipulation” and that he is awaiting the outcome of the investigation.

Prosecutor Damien Martinelli said there was, so far, “no evidence” implicating anyone beyond those already identified, adding that Estrosi and his wife would be questioned as witnesses.

Two rights

If Ciotti wins, the victory will ripple across the whole of France, well beyond the pebble beaches of the Côte d’Azur. It’s not just a story about a big city turning to an ally of Le Pen, but also one about whether the traditional conservative camp — the party of Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac — could ultimately team up with the far right.

For now, Bruno Retailleau, head of France’s main conservative party Les Républicains, has not gone that far, but his response to the bitter clash in Nice has reignited debate about whether there will ultimately be a “union of the rights” — an alliance between conservatives and nationalists.

Earlier this week, he refused to endorse Estrosi for the runoff, despite the current mayor being officially backed by his party. Instead he took a “neither-nor” approach, calling on voters to follow their conscience in what he called a “harmful” campaign.

What he conspicuously did not do — as earlier conservatives did — is call for Les Républicains’ voters to shun the far right. Indeed, Ciotti thanked Retailleau for his stance and hailed him as a “man of character” for not endorsing Estrosi.

Friends to rivals

Ciotti hails from Les Républicains and led the party from 2022 to 2024, before veering to the far right.

He was ousted from the party leadership in a farcical coup after he proposed cooperating with Le Pen’s far right amid the snap parliamentary election of 2024. He was ultimately toppled after locking himself in party headquarters, forcing another senior party official to go and find a spare key.

He now heads a micro-party, the Union of the Right for the Republic, and has secured National Rally backing on the riviera.

The rivalry with Estrosi didn’t start with this campaign. Estrosi hired Ciotti as a parliamentary assistant after being elected to the French lower house in 1988, and the pair went on to work in tandem until falling out in 2017, shortly after Macron’s first election win.

Estrosi quickly moved toward supporting the centrist president; while Ciotti remained a staunch opponent.

Estrosi, a former professional motorcycle racer, trailed Ciotti by about 15,000 votes in the first round. He is betting that he could be bailed out by the 25,000 voters who backed left-wing candidates in the first round, as well as on the roughly 100,000 who abstained, disproportionately living in poorer neighborhoods.

Pressing the flesh

Little wonder then that Estrosi on Wednesday afternoon was walking round a working-class district near the central train station, shaking hands and taking selfies, many with residents of North African descent despite having always called for a crackdown on immigration.

The next day, he stood alongside left-leaning city councillors, pledging to speed up the city’s green transition and warning of the perils of the far right.

“We can’t afford not to commit ourselves to blocking the path of what could spell disaster for a city like ours,” he said in reference to a Ciotti win.

There’s certainly a good measure of opportunism here, because based on past remarks and despite recent alliances, Estrosi is hardly a moderate.

Juliette Chesnel-Le Roux, the Green candidate, highlighted his track record at a press conference on Thursday: He opposed same-sex marriage — describing it as a “distraction worthy of a Las Vegas show” in 2012 — warned in 2015 of an “Islamist fifth column” in France, and claimed in 2023 that images from Gaza of mothers carrying dead infants were staged.

Chesnel-Le Roux made the runoff by garnering more than 10 percent of the vote. While left-wing candidates typically withdraw to block the far right in cases where they are unable to win — as happened in nearby Marseille — she has refused to do so. For her, Estrosi and Ciotti are two sides of the same coin, and she worries that pulling out would leave the city without any opposition.

On her campaign poster, she calls for a rejection of both camps with a stark “ni l’un, ni l’autre” — neither one nor the other. It is illustrated with fingers pointing at the two other candidates’ posters.

“The people of Nice know that it was Estrosi who launched Ciotti,” she said. “If we pull out, who becomes the opposition? … Members of Estrosi’s group will be strongly tempted to join Ciotti.”

Campaign posters in Nice. | Victor Goury-Laffont/POLITICO

Which model for the right?

That view is echoed by Jean-Marc Governatori, the Green candidate in the last municipal election who is now backing Ciotti after being promised a role in the future local administration.

“Ninety percent of those elected on Estrosi’s list will come over to our side,” he said at a café near City Hall. “Estrosi has a tremendous capacity to rally people against him.”

That may be what pushed Les Républicains’ Retailleau to ditch the current mayor in the campaign’s final stretch. A close ally, who was granted anonymity to discuss party business, said younger officials had been complaining for weeks about “the direction” of Estrosi’s campaign due to its increased overtures to the left.

A Ciotti victory would force not only conservatives but also the far right to clarify their path — particularly on core economic policy.

Ciotti is a fiscal hawk who wants mass privatizations and admires Argentina’s chainsaw-wielding, libertarian President Javier Milei. His strategy is to win over wealthy and business voters who once backed the traditional right.

Le Pen, by contrast, describes herself as being “neither left nor right,” defends parts of the welfare state and targets less affluent voters in deindustrialized regions.

But her legal troubles could bar her from running in 2027.

If 30-year-old Bardella replaces her — an increasingly likely scenario — he may have to choose between those two models, and decide where the probable next mayor from Nice fits in his plans for France.

Sarah Paillou contributed to this report.