Mélenchon threatens to smother moderate rivals with early French presidential bid

PARIS — French hard-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon is trying to use his head start in the race for president to outflank his left-wing rivals.

Since announcing his bid on Sunday, the 74-year-old anticapitalist and his allies from his party, France Unbowed, have flooded the airwaves and social media with a simple pitch for what will likely be his final bid for the Elysée.

“We have a team, a plan and only one candidate,” Mélenchon, who came a whisker away from advancing to the runoff in the last two presidential elections, said Sunday.

The hope is that message will resonate with voters exasperated by the infighting that’s riven the French political left, whose other leaders mostly loathe Mélenchon and his unapologetically divisive brand of politics. He was widely repudiated for comments deemed by some as antisemitic in the lead-up to municipal elections in March, a charge he denied.

Mélenchon’s rivals on the left say they’re worried he’d be crushed by far-right leader Jordan Bardella, as recent polls have predicted. But they cannot agree on a common platform or a method to choose a single candidate. More than a half-dozen left-wing figures have already declared for the 2027 contest or are weighing bids.

“Mélenchon is taking advantage of the fact that the leadership of the Socialists and the Greens are busy navel-gazing to launch his campaign,” a Socialist official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told POLITICO.

France Unbowed is a well-oiled machine built largely as a vehicle for Mélenchon’s presidential ambitions. His campaign racked up an impressive 150,000 “citizen endorsements” in less than 24 hours following his bid, providing the party with a trove of contact information for future mobilization and fundraising.

But winning the presidential election will require Mélenchon to bat down criticism that he is an extremist bent on sowing division in French society. He’s got a lot of convincing to do — a poll last month showed only 14 percent of respondents had a positive opinion of him.

Slow and steady

Erwan Lestrohan, a researcher at French pollster Odoxa, said Mélenchon’s strong performance in the 2022 presidential election that nearly propelled him to the runoff was in part thanks to his “ability to draw in a large number of left-wing votes, including from more moderate voters.”

But Mélenchon has suffered a “noticeable decline” in support among moderates, Lestrohan said. “The question is whether he can win them back despite his deteriorated image,” he added.

Mélenchon was criticized for campaigning the 2024 European election almost entirely on a platform devoted to the Palestinian cause, and more recently he faced widespread furor over his continued affiliation and defense of an antifascist organization whose members were accused of killing of an activist with ties to far-right groups.

The latest poll on the 2027 presidential election has Mélenchon netting between 12 and 13 percent of the vote — down from the nearly 22 percent he scored in the last election, but still within striking distance of advancing in such a crowded field.

To winnow down the number of left-wing candidates, the Greens and some members of the center-left Socialist Party want to hold a left-wing primary sans Mélenchon. But prominent figures like former President François Hollande and MEP Raphaël Glucksmann — both expected to launch presidential bids — are opposed to such a contest.

The dispute has been raging for months behind closed doors. Raquel Garrido, a former France Unbowed MP who has since broken with Mélenchon and advocates for a left-wing primary, told POLITICO the “chaos” among the rest of the French left proves Mélenchon right.

Mélenchon is now positioning himself for a showdown with the far right, and even trying to turn his image as a divider to his advantage.

“When it comes to the National Rally, yes, I will be divisive,” he said Sunday in an interview with online outlet Brut. “But I will also be able to bring people together. The two can certainly go hand in hand.”