Word: penned
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...striking aspects of Le Pen's campaign this year has been his widening appeal to the voters in France's crime-ridden banlieues, or suburbs. After the riots of November 2005, suburban residents registered in droves to vote for the first time. Conventional wisdom had it that most would support the left. But in the last few years, Le Pen has consciously tried to broaden his political appeal, in a makeover masterminded by his daughter and political strategist Marine. The younger Le Pen has persuaded her father to tone down his more controversial policies, avoid the inflammatory comments that have...
...Pen is explicitly courting the new voters in the suburbs, and may do surprisingly well there. In a speech last September he appealed to "French citizens of foreign origins to join us." Such voters, he promised, could expect "the same rights, but also the same responsibilities" as French whites "to the degree you respect our customs and laws...
...Given Le Pen's long record of opposition to immigration, how is his appeal to French-born children and grandchildren of immigrants finding receptive ears? Reynié suggests those new voters are keen beyond all else to vote against Sarkozy. Many suburban residents still seethe at what they consider racially loaded language Sarkozy used during high-profile visits to troubled housing projects in his role as Interior Minister. They view that as part of Sarkozy's presidential campaign to project himself as the sole protector of the law-abiding French nation against the crime-addled savages of the suburbs...
Habiba, a first-generation French woman of Algerian parentage who prefers not to give her last name, says many minority residents in the housing projects around her Toulouse home say they'll be voting for Le Pen - in large part to thwart Sarkozy's bid for the Elysée. "Sarkozy has stigmatized very specific populations as undesirable or violence prone, often with language many of us find more pointedly racist than Le Pen's ever was," she says...
...part, Sarkozy seems to be seeking to counter Le Pen's advances among suburban minorities by increasingly calling for traditional Le Pen voters to join his campaign. Speaking of National Front voters, Sarkozy last month told a rally of supporters that "demonizing them is counterproductive...