France’s dueling far-right presidential candidates were holding back-to-back campaign rallies Saturday, trying to steal each other’s thunder and keep their anti-immigration, anti-Islam agenda front and center in the race for April’s presidential election.
Marine Le Pen, who came in second in the 2017 presidential election, was holding her first major campaign event in the city of Reims in Champagne country. She will present her platform and try to reinvigorate her base after some high-profile defections to the campaign of rival Eric Zemmour.
Zemmour, a pundit and provocateur who has been repeatedly convicted of hate speech, planned a rally in the northern city of Lille on the same day as Le Pen’s, apparently to try to draw attention away from her.
Both are hoping to unseat President Emmanuel Macron in the presidential election on April 10, which also has a presidential runoff between the top two contenders on April 24. Macron has a campaign team in place but has yet to officially declare his candidacy. A centrist, he has shifted to the right amid growing support for conservative and far-right policies, notably on security and immigration.
