French firebrand Sarah Knafo looks to Paris mayor race for big breakthrough

PARIS — Sarah Knafo is using the electoral race for Paris mayor as a springboard to build her profile as the rising star of France’s anti-immigration, libertarian right.

The 32-year-old firebrand MEP is on track for a significant breakthrough in a city with a traditional aversion to the far right. If she can maintain that level of support — she’s currently polling at 12 percent — Knafo would be the first far-right candidate ever to make the second round in the City of Lights.

The big question is what will come next after a strong showing in Paris. The speculation among lawmakers and political insiders is that she could emerge as the presidential candidate for the Reconquest party, founded by her romantic partner Eric Zemmour, an inflammatory commentator who came fourth in the first round of the 2022 election.

Knafo hates the “far-right” label and argues the designation is “stupid and obsolete,” styling herself as a Gaullist conservative who will govern through Swiss-style referendums. But it’s a tough label to shake given her association with Zemmour and membership of the Reconquest party, which takes a hard line on migration and Islam in France. In the 2022 election, the party sought mass remigrations and campaigned to ban the veil, along with the building of minarets and big mosques.

In this year’s contest for mayor, she has campaigned on a platform based on slashing the size of city government and rolling back current Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s landmark green policies, wanting to allow cars back on the banks of the Seine.

She is pushing to dramatically increase the size of the municipal police force and arm them with guns, as other municipalities have done in recent years.

“It is indeed scandalous that Ms. Hidalgo refuses to arm the municipal police when we see that 80 percent of French municipal police forces are armed,” Knafo said earlier this month. “In a city with one of the the highest crime rates, in a city with one of the highest rates of burglary, theft, rape and sexual assault, she thought that it was not necessary to arm the police.”

Reconquering Paris

The most conspicuous policy line dividing Knafo and her party from the front-runners is immigration.

“Mass immigration did not create our problems, but it exacerbates almost all of them,” Knafo said in December before declaring her candidacy.

Knafo has, since launching her campaign, taken a less fiery tone on migration. But the party position is unambiguous. Few will forget Zemmour’s comments on the Muslim community and his whitewashing of Vichy France’s role in the Holocaust — both of which earned him hate speech convictions.

Zemmour is also widely credited with popularizing the “great replacement” conspiracy theory in France — that white populations are being deliberately displaced by non-whites — and it’s no coincidence that the name he chose for his party, Reconquest, references the Spanish Reconquista when the country’s medieval monarchs fought to expel Muslims. 

The party’s stance on immigration will likely prevent Knafo from winning the race to lead a diverse city like Paris, but she has room to bolster her numbers if she can secure more support from the French capital’s wealthy, conservative neighborhoods. Right-wing residents of those districts often align with the far right on immigration but are scared off by the murky history and protectionist agenda of the National Rally, France’s most popular political party, and its candidate Thierry Mariani. That gives Knafo an opening.

Those voters likely won’t mind just how out of touch she seemed in early February when, during an interview, she said that an annual metro pass — which costs more than €90 a month — costs €52 a year.

Replacing Zemmour

The strong start to Knafo’s campaign in Paris is already fueling speculation that she, not Zemmour, will fly Reconquest’s colors in next year’s 2027 presidential race.  

Knafo has repeatedly tried to pour cold water on talk of a presidential bid during her mayoral campaign, and Zemmour reiterated at the end of January that Knafo had been “biblically clear” that she would not be running for president. 

But that’s taken with a pinch of salt.  

A friend of the couple, who, like others quoted in this piece, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about sensitive matters, said they were skeptical of the public posturing.

“If [she] gets a respectable score in Paris, she’ll be the one running for president,” the friend said.

And a lawmaker from the National Rally, Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, who knows Reconquest well, said the 67-year-old Zemmour is starting to be seen by his party’s supporters as “a bit fossilized.”  

Even if a decision has not been made on who will represent Reconquest in 2027, their contrasting fortunes are so clear that they’re fueling a running joke in Paris: The man who shot to political fame by promoting the great replacement theory is about to be replaced by his girlfriend.  

Darling of the Bollosphere

Knafo certainly has the resumé expected to make it to the top of France’s governing elite.

Like National Rally President Jordan Bardella, France’s most popular politician according to most polls, she grew up in the impoverished Parisian suburbs of Seine Saint-Denis. Unlike Bardella, who dropped out of university, however, she graduated from some of France’s most prestigious institutions — including the famed presidential finishing school, the École Nationale d’Administration — before becoming a magistrate and getting her political start with the mainstream conservative party now known as Les Républicains.

After her election to the European Parliament in 2024, Reconquest officials came up with a division of labor for Knafo and Zemmour. Zemmour would retreat to his writing while Knafo would be the party’s omnipresent face online and voice on the airwaves. She’s since become the darling of the “Bollosphere,” the collection of ultra-conservative media outlets run by the conservative Bolloré family.

A friend of Knafo’s told POLITICO last summer she kept an eye on her image and messaging with the attention to detail required of a front-line politician. Her campaign has so far shown the digital savvy that’s come to be expected of millennial politicians.

“She’ll demand why an [Instagram] reel ends at such and such minute when she had a great smile on her face after,” the friend said.

Zemmour, meanwhile, only pays passing attention to social media.

“It’s a bit cute, he’s happy when he gets views,” said Knafo’s friend.

It is Knafo who is also charged with developing the party’s policy on core domestic issues, beyond the headline-grabbing themes of security and immigration.So it’s Knafo who presents the party’s counter-budget and proposes the abolition of all inheritance tax.

In 2024, she managed to secure the job of authoring a non-binding report on tech sovereignty in the European Parliament. But centrist political parties, fearing the rising influence of the far right, effectively booted her from the role. They drafted a full “counter-report” behind the scenes and got it adopted in lieu of Knafo’s version.

That report was approved last month, with Knafo’s name still on it despite complaints from the architects of the coup — and even a last-minute amendment calling out her own party. Knafo maintains the substance of the report is unchanged and says she sees no reason to withdraw her name from it.

Bankable

Knafo has made a strong impression in Paris’ right-wing circles as a polished operator who could challenge National Rally President Bardella for the mantle of the French far right’s millennial champion. Several who spoke to POLITICO for this story acknowledged that she’s a more accomplished politician and harder to caricature than the more ideological Zemmour.

National Rally lawmaker Jean-Philippe Tanguy refers to her as “Cleopatra.” He says it’s a compliment nodding to “her capacity as a strategist.”

But does all that really mean she’ll replace Zemmour on the ballot in the next presidential election?

Those who say yes believe Zemmour, who regularly praises Knafo’s talent when asked about her publicly, recognizes the dynamic and is perfectly happy to return to the world of the acerbic intelligentsia. An acquaintance who sees them on vacation in the south of France said it was telling to watch Zemmour ambling down the street, pushing their child in a stroller, while Knafo was three meters ahead with a phone glued to her ear.

Those who believe the reverse say he would be humiliated, pointing to his 2006 essay “The First Sex” and noting that he has repeatedly belittled the idea of women in power. One far-right parliamentarian said he imagined Zemmour “unhappier than ever” and “having trouble sleeping” watching Knafo’s rise.

Amid growing calls for a union spanning the entire French political right ahead of the next presidential election, conservative heavyweights such as Laurent Wauquiez, the top-ranking MP in Les Républicains, and Cannes Mayor David Lisnard are clamoring for a primary on the right spanning the ideological spectrum of “[center-right Justice Minister] Gérald Darmanin to Sarah Knafo.”

Such a contest is unlikely to happen given whichever candidate represents the National Rally and Édouard Philippe, the center-right former PM who has already declared for the presidential race, would sit it out. Bruno Retailleau, the leader of Les Républicains, does not want to participate either.

But Knafo privately hopes to see the primary take place. Were she to run, she likes her chances against whoever Les Républicains try to put up against her — as do other big hitters on the right.

“I don’t understand what they’re doing,” one National Rally lawmaker said of Wauquiez and the other conservatives pushing for a primary. “They’re taking the risk that she’ll win.”

One right-wing government minister was even more blunt.

“It’s Knafo who wins. She’s more bankable than Laurent Wauquiez or Bruno Retailleau,” they said.

Mathieu Pollet, Max Griera and Joshua Berlinger contributed to this report.

This is adapted from an article first published by POLITICO in French.