By Noemie Bisserbe | Photography by Julien Bonnin for WSJ
NICE, France -- Nearly two years ago, conservative leaders voted to expel French politician Eric Ciotti from their party over his alliance with Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally.
Now that once-taboo connection might help catapult him to a victory in the mayoral race in Nice, which would become the largest French city to be governed by the far right. Ciotti captured more than 43% of the vote in the first round of Nice's mayoral race, far ahead of the center-right candidate backed by President Emmanuel Macron.
The second round of voting on Sunday will test whether the practice among France's political establishment of isolating the far-right, known as the cordon sanitaire, remains a viable strategy after years of efforts by Le Pen to normalize her party. It will also show whether mainline conservative voters in France are willing to back candidates allied with Le Pen's party, characterized by a hard line on immigration, ahead of next year's presidential election.
"The race in Nice is a litmus test for the presidential election next year," said Mujtaba Rahman, head of Europe for Eurasia, a risk-analysis firm.
In the capital of the French Riviera, the campaign has been unusually bitter. The longtime center-right mayor, Christian Estrosi, has been trading insults with Ciotti for weeks.
Tensions reached new heights last month, after Estrosi said he found a pig's head, marked with a star of David and an insult, in front of his home. Estrosi, who is a vocal supporter of Israel and whose wife is Jewish, denounced the act as despicable and said he wouldn't be intimidated.
The situation grew murkier when police said days later they were investigating whether people close to Estrosi were involved in the incident. Four people face preliminary charges ranging from incitement of hatred to criminal conspiracy in the case. Both candidates deny involvement.
For two decades, the two candidates worked closely together in both the National Assembly and Nice's city hall. They belonged then to the same conservative party, now called Les Républicains. But they started growing apart after Macron's election in 2017. Estrosi eventually left Les Républicains and joined Macron's centrist coalition, while Ciotti rose to become the leader of Les Républicains.
Squeezed by Macron's party and the far right, Les Républicains faced an existential crisis. In June 2024, Ciotti announced a pact with Le Pen's party not to run against each other in parliamentary elections. It was an about-face after long having vowed to never form an alliance with the far right.
The decision triggered an outcry, even within his own party. Other Les Républicains leaders swiftly moved to call a meeting to expel him, branding him a traitor and accusing him of sacrificing the party's fundamental principles for his own political ambitions.
Ciotti locked himself in the party headquarters in an apparent attempt to block the meeting. He eventually left the building, but the standoff over his status lasted weeks before he left the party.
This month, the National Rally's backing could prove instrumental again to help him win municipal elections in his hometown of Nice. Le Pen's party has left the field open for Ciotti by not fielding any candidate this year in Nice. In past municipal elections, the party has captured over 15% of the first-round vote in the right-wing city.
Still, Ciotti has treated the campaign like a balancing act. He needs to leverage the support of the National Rally to attract its voters, without alienating traditional right-wing voters. He has sought to minimize the role his alliance has played, saying people in Nice are indifferent to political labels.
"That's not what people in Nice are talking about," Ciotti said. What they want is to put an end to Estrosi's 18-year tenure, he added.
Estrosi, for his part, has been drawing attention to the connection and agitating for all voters to unite behind him to form a "republican front" against the far-right in the runoff on Sunday -- a strategy that has long kept the National Rally away from power in local elections, and helped Macron become president.
Those calls, however, are increasingly going unheeded. Juliette Chesnel-Le Roux, the candidate backed by the Greens and the Socialists who qualified for the runoff but finished a distant third, has decided to remain in the race rather than dropping out to help Estrosi. She says that, in the past, dropping out hasn't stemmed the region's rightward trend.
"We came to realize that it didn't prevent the far right from gaining ground in the region at all -- quite the contrary," she said.
Matteo Massoni, a 20-year-old student, said this election presents for him a real moral dilemma. He cast his vote for the left-wing candidate in the first round.
"I could switch my vote to Estrosi to try to stop Ciotti and the far right from winning," he said. "But I'm not sure those two are really that different."
Write to Noemie Bisserbe at noemie.bisserbe@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 21, 2026 11:00 ET (15:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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