Anne Hidalgo embarks on a “tour de France” on employment and purchasing power to try to get her campaign off the ground

Socialist presidential candidate Anne Hidalgo is trying to finally get her campaign off the ground. Two and a half months after her declaration of candidacy, the current mayor of Paris is still stagnating around 5% of voting intentions. It is therefore increasing its initiatives in the field and is now embarking on a tour of France entitled “Living with dignity from your work”. Because, his team is convinced, employment and purchasing power are among the “main subjects of concern of the French”. No question of getting caught up in the “nauseating debates” dictated by the right.

Anne Hidalgo wants to speak to the working class and therefore goes to industrial land. Monday, November 22, for example, she travels to Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin), to a former industrial site dedicated to digital technology and then to Stocamine, which manages toxic waste. Anne Hidalgo wants to show that we can combine ecological transition and social justice, a niche that she considers herself the only one to embody in this campaign.

Her journey will also take her to Saint-Etienne on the theme of occupational health, or to Carpentras with farmers. She will interact with professionals during the day and participate in activist meetings in the evening, which reminds her of her years as a labor inspector.

It is difficult to say if this will be enough to get the voting intentions off the ground. The socialist candidate’s team brushes aside the polls, calling them unreliable and recalling that they have already been wrong in the past. But behind the voting intentions, lies the issue of campaign financing. Exceeding 5% in the first round means up to eight million euros in costs reimbursed by the state. Below this threshold, the candidate must pay for everything alone with his party.

Faced with the proliferation of applications from the left, banks necessarily take this risk into account. The PS ensures that discussions are underway with several of them on several possible amounts and that there has been no refusal of loans, contrary to what a newspaper said last week. Officially, there is no question of “disconnecting” the socialist candidacy. But his competitors do not miss an opportunity to make him call with the foot. “Socialists and progressives, Join us! “ Yannick Jadot said again on Sunday November 21 in an interview. Response from Anne Hidalgo’s team: “We are doing our campaign.”