Centrist in French race wins main parties' favor

FILE - In this Sunday April 23, 2017 file photo, French centrist presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron waves before addressing his supporters at his election day headquarters in Paris. They could hardly be more different: Pro-European centrist Emmanuel Macron is facing anti-immigration, anti-EU Marine Le Pen in France's presidential runoff May 7.
FILE - In this Sunday April 23, 2017 file photo, French centrist presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron waves before addressing his supporters at his election day headquarters in Paris. They could hardly be more different: Pro-European centrist Emmanuel Macron is facing anti-immigration, anti-EU Marine Le Pen in France's presidential runoff May 7.

PARIS -- France's established parties are rallying around the man who helped shut them out of the presidential runoff, centrist Emmanuel Macron, in an effort to keep far-right Marine Le Pen out of the Elysee Palace.

Support for Macron also poured in Monday from the seat of the European Union, as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Jewish and Muslim groups troubled by Le Pen's nationalist vision.

Merkel wished Macron "all the best for the next two weeks." And the German chancellor's chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, tweeted that "the result for Emmanuel Macron shows: France AND Europe can win together! The center is stronger than the populists think!"

It is now up to French voters to decide who to entrust with their nuclear-armed nation in the May 7 presidential runoff. Polls consider Macron the front-runner, and a live televised debate between Le Pen and Macron is set for May 3.

France's political mainstream united Monday to urge voters to back Macron and reject Le Pen's far-right agenda.

Politicians on the moderate left and right, including French President Francois Hollande and the losing Socialist and Republican party candidates in Sunday's first-round vote, maneuvered to block Le Pen's path to power.

In a solemn address from the Elysee Palace, Hollande said he would vote for Macron, his former economy minister, because Le Pen represents "both the danger of the isolation of France and of rupture with the European Union."

Voters narrowed the French presidential field from 11 to two in Sunday's first-round vote, and losers from across the spectrum called on their supporters to choose Macron in round two. Only the defeated far-left candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon, refused to back Macron.

He said instead that he would seek the opinion of his supporters through his website.

The contest is widely seen as a litmus test for the populist wave that last year prompted Britain to vote to leave the European Union and U.S. voters to elect Donald Trump president.

Le Pen, meanwhile, moved to peel away voters historically opposed to her National Front Party, long tainted by accusations of racism and anti-Semitism.

On Monday, she announced that she was temporarily stepping down as party leader, a move that appeared to be aimed at drawing a wider range of potential voters and was in keeping with her efforts in recent years to garner broader support from the left and right.

"Tonight, I am no longer the president of the National Front. I am the presidential candidate," she said on French public television news, adding that she wanted to be "above partisan considerations."

National Front Party officials also joined the chorus, noting that a vote for Le Pen would be a natural move for those fed up with the status quo.

"The voters who voted for Mr. Melenchon are angry voters. They can be in agreement with us," said Steeve Briois, the mayor of Le Pen's northern bastion of Henin-Beaumont, adding that those far-left voters sought choices "outside the system."

However even there, where Le Pen won 46.5 percent of the vote, her supporters were pessimistic about her chances in the runoff.

"It's a bummer: If people could come here and see how good the National Front has been for our town, they would understand how good it can be for our country," said Jean-Louis Devienne, 72.

Choosing from inside the system is no longer an option. Voters rejected the two mainstream parties that have alternated power for decades in favor of Le Pen and Macron, who has never held elected office and who founded his own political movement just last year.

Macron's vision of a tolerant France and a united Europe with open borders is a stark contrast with Le Pen's inward-looking, "French-first" platform that calls for closed borders, tougher security, less immigration and dropping the shared euro currency to return to the French franc.

Le Pen went on the offensive against Macron in her first public comments Monday.

"He is a hysterical, radical 'Europeanist.' He is for total open borders. He says there is no such thing as French culture," she said.

But Macron's party spokesman, Benjamin Griveaux, scoffed at the idea of Le Pen as an agent of change.

"She's been in the political system for 30 years. She inherited her father's party and we will undoubtedly have Le Pens running for the next 20 years, because after we had the father, we have the daughter, and we will doubtless have the niece," he said, referring to Marion Marechal-Le Pen. "So she is in a truly bad position to be talking about the elites."

Information for this article was contributed by Angela Charlton, Elaine Ganley, Sylvie Corbet, Lori Hinnant, Thomas Adamson and Philippe Sotto of The Associated Press; and by Aurelien Breeden, Elian Peltier and Pamela Rougerie of The New York Times.

A Section on 04/25/2017

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