Laurent Gérault and Jean Luc Rotureau' s candidacies : first distant, then maybe convergent

Laurent Gérault

Twenty four hours after it was announced, the Laurent Gérault's candidacy to Angers mayor office has triggered a lot of criticisms from the political movements close to his own party, the Union des démocrates indépendants (Udi). The Mouvement démocrate (Modem), the Parti radical, themselves members of the minority group in the Angers city council, as Mr. Gérault, bluntly expressed they were against his project of a list which could affect those of Christophe Béchu, Union pour un mouvement populaire (Ump), the main challenger of Frédéric Béatse, Parti socialiste, current Angers mayor.

If such critics don't appear to weaken the will of Mr. Gérault to involve himseil in the campaign, and be present for the second round, they neverthless cast a doubt about his capacity to get at least 10% of the votes. So that could drive him to ally with Jean-Luc Rotureau, himself candidate to Angers mayor office, against Mr. Béatse, of whom he was the deputy mayor, Mr. Rotureau having chances to overcome the 10% threshold in order to compete for the second round. The reaction of Mr. Gérault after Mr. Rotureau made public his decision to run for Angers mayor office was rather friendly. 

Jean-Luc Rotureau

The two candidates never criticize each other and even have, in their respective platforms, some points of conver-gence. These are visible in facilites schemes like the building of only the half of the second tramway line, the postponement of the iceskating and some structural changes in relationships between departments of Angers city, Angers Loire Développement or even those of the Conseil général de Maine-et-Loire. From an arithmetical point of view, those candidates would have interest to be allied. But each said that electoral considerations were not sufficient to constitute a policy.