FRANCE:A victory for the right deep in socialist territory would symbolise a rout, writes Lara Marlowein Périgueux.
Jérôme Peyrat's success or failure in legislative elections tomorrow will be a measure of the intensity of the "blue wave" that is sweeping France. Opinion polls indicate that the party Peyrat helped to establish, the right-wing UMP, will win at least 400 of 577 seats in the National Assembly.
"I'm trying to conquer socialist territory," says Peyrat. "If I win, it will be because of the 'blue wave'."
The Dordogne department has traditionally voted left. Long a trouble-shooter for right-wing leaders, Peyrat yearned to become a politician in his own right. So he asked to be sent into battle in his home region. In the first round last Sunday, he trailed the socialist candidate, Pascal Deguilhem, by less than half a percentage point.
For nearly 20 years, Peyrat (44) has employed his energy, good humour, boyish charm and shrewd sense of politics in the service of the French right. He followed former president Jacques Chirac from Paris city hall to the Élysée Palace in 1995.
As director general of the UMP since 2004, he ran France's leading political party on a day-to-day basis and supervised Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign rallies. When he was elected president, Sarkozy took Peyrat back to the Élysée, as political adviser. "The ushers cried when they saw me returning," Peyrat recalls. "They said, 'we know we'll laugh with you around'."
It took skill to survive the crossfire in the Chirac-Sarkozy power struggle. "The more Chirac and [ the former prime minister Dominique] de Villepin tried to kill Sarkozy, the stronger it made him," Peyrat says with a laugh. His relationship with the older president was almost filial; with Sarkozy, there is closer collaboration.
"Chirac tries to get rid of problems, go around them," Peyrat observes. "Sarkozy smashes into them."
Peyrat's father is a farmer who converted his land to a camping ground. His mother sells pottery. He won scholarships to Bordeaux and Paris, where he graduated from the prestigious École Nationale d'Administration.
Whether it is self-made men such as Peyrat or the heirs to France's biggest fortunes, Sarkozy likes winners. "The more rich people there are in the country, the more jobs there are," says Peyrat. "Bouygues and Arnault [ billionaire friends of Sarkozy] feed a lot of people. Nicolas Sarkozy doesn't have any complexes about money."
Peyrat seems to symbolise France's slow shift to the right. "I voted for [ the socialist president François] Mitterrand in 1981," he says. "It was my friends at law school who told me I was right-wing. If I were British I'd vote Labour. If I were American I'd be a Democrat. But the left in France are stupid and moralising."
Peyrat helped foster Sarkozy's strategy of blurring ideological lines. While other candidates tried to occupy the political centre, Sarkozy veered hard right, then poached leading politicians from the left and centre.
At his last campaign rally in Périgueux, Peyrat followed a similar course. "Do we look like fascists? Do we look like stooges for capitalist bosses?" he asked rhetorically. "It is we who represent old-time, peasant values! The left is disqualified. It is we who represent the values of workers, of labour, we who will create jobs and wealth!"
The images in Peyrat's campaign headquarters are witness to his ability to reconcile the disparate threads of the French right. Chirac, Sarkozy and Charles de Gaulle are all there. So is Yves Guéna, the Resistance hero who was for 30 years the mayor of Périgueux, then president of France's constitutional council.
Guéna (85) never supports candidates, but told Peyrat he would campaign for him because he was more humane than others. Guéna's presence reassures the ageing population of Périgord. (The department's name was changed to Dordogne at the time of the French Revolution, but both names are used interchangeably.)
"I hope Jérôme Peyrat will be my successor," Guéna said repeatedly as the two canvassed in the market at Saint-Astier. "I've been out of politics for a decade, but I've come back for him." "A Man from Périgord", Peyrat's campaign slogan, is also meant to reassure voters.
Périgord is the home of foie gras and the site of the 20,000-year-old cave paintings at Lascaux, the world's oldest frescoes. But it is also an isolated enclave, five hours from Paris by train, that has always distrusted outsiders. Rebels who fought the English in the Hundred Years War hid in its caves and forests, as did the Resistance during the second World War.
To complicate matters, this department of 389,000 people is divided into white, black, green and scarlet Périgord. White Périgord is so called because of its quicklime factories. The first constituency, population 105,000, where Peyrat is standing, is the poorest part of the department.
Peyrat is from black Périgord, named for its truffles. He has been mayor of his home village, La Roque-Gageac, since 1995. But the 60km that separate La Roque-Gageac from Périgueux, added to his Parisian manners, make Peyrat almost a foreigner here, one reason why Guéna's support is so precious.
At a debate in Périgueux this week, Deguilhem, Peyrat's socialist opponent, boasted that unlike Peyrat, he is from white Périgord. "That's racism!" Peyrat countered. "I am Périgourdin!"
Deguilhem played for the local rugby team and teaches physical education. Like Peyrat, he enjoys a reputation for bonhomie. But his seizure of the nomination from an older, outgoing socialist candidate created rancour that could help Peyrat.
If elected, Deguilhem says he will propose a law limiting genetically modified organisms in agriculture. The region's shoe and furniture industries have been decimated by outsourcing. Peyrat says his priority will be to attract entrepreneurs, and "to pass laws that prevent businessmen being terrorised by regulations".
To improve the region's tourist industry, he proposes cutting the journey time of the high-speed TGV train from Paris to nearby Bordeaux, and building a motorway from Périgueux to Limoges.
A lawyer named Pierre Gaillard takes Peyrat around to meet local notables. "He's a rascal, but he's my friend," Gaillard repeats.
So why should the Périgourdins vote Peyrat? "We have a right-wing president, and a right-wing assembly. Our candidate is close to Sarkozy. If we want something, we'll be heard."