Word: delanoe
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...different as Laurel and Hardy. Conservative Philippe Séguin, 57, is corpulent and earthy, with a resonant bass voice and an addiction to unfiltered Gitanes. Socialist Bertrand Delanoë, 50, an avowed homosexual, is soft-spoken and ascetic-looking with a gift for irony and a penchant for slim cigarillos. Séguin, a former Minister of Labor and ex-president of the National Assembly, is a man of national ambitions who dreams of occupying the Elysée Palace. Delanoë, apart from one term in Parliament, has spent his entire political career as a party activist...
...blow, the latest polls bear troubling news for the conservatives. Longtime rightist bastions like Lyons and Toulouse could fall to the Socialists and their allies, and the left seems likely to retain fiefdoms like Strasbourg, Rennes and Lille. Though conservatives still retain a solid grip on Marseilles and Bordeaux, Delanoë's Socialist-led ticket looks set to wrest Paris away from the Gaullists for the first time in 24 years...
...right's fate in Paris, Chirac's personal fiefdom from 1977 until his presidential victory in 1995, owes more to conservative blunders than to Delanoë's prowess on the hustings. Its problems are rooted in Chirac's choice of Jean Tiberi, a loyal but mediocre lieutenant, as his successor in 1995. "It was a terrible mistake," an official of the Gaullist Rally for the Republic (rpr) party now admits. "It became immediately apparent that Tiberi had no breadth, that he was a pathetic puppet who knew nothing about the world. We put Forrest Gump in the mayor's chair...
...over allegations of corruption going back to Chirac's days as mayor and, not least, the charge that Séguin was a parachuté-a carpetbagger brought in from the outside. To make matters worse, he has run a lackluster race marked by baffling tactical shifts. By contrast, Delanoë's low-key campaign, boosted by the national popularity of the Socialist-led government, has the wind at its back...
...Paris' fashionable first arrondissement last week, Séguin wound up having coffee in a local bistro with fellow rpr candidates. Looking tired and downcast, he fiddled quietly with a silver lighter as his colleagues talked bravely about how "our message is finally getting through." On the same day Delanoë, accompanied by Education Minister Jack Lang and Interior Minister Daniel Vaillant, strolled triumphantly through the poor but bustling 18th arrondissement surrounded by journalists and well-wishers. "Paris needs an alternative," he said, "and we offer positive reasons for it with a program drawn up with the Parisians themselves based...