Far right, facing barrage, fails in mayoral bid

2009-07-05 22:19:04 -

PARIS (AP) - A leftist candidate backed by an array of political parties successfully staved off his far-right opponent in a mayoral race Sunday that the National Front had hope would start its comeback.
Other parties, from communists to President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservatives, rallied behind Daniel Duquenne whom voters designated the new mayor of Henin-Beaumont, a former mining town in northern France, in a runoff race.
National Front candidate Steeve Briois had won last week's first-round vote with a 20-point margin, but parties fearing a return of the far right banded together to block him in the final round of the bi-election.
Duquenne's victory was slim but comfortable, with 52.4 percent of the vote, compared to Briois' 47.6 percent.
The barrage of support for Duquenne recalled the successful bid to block National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 2002 presidential race against President Jacques Chirac.
The Henin-Beaumont election was organized after Socialist Mayor Gerard Dalongeville was jailed in early April on preliminary charges of alleged extortion and favoritism. He was excluded from the Socialist Party.
«I'm happy with what my political family did for this election,» a top aide to Sarkozy, Henri Guaino, said on French television, referring to the Union for a Popular Movement, or UMP, to band with Socialists and other rivals against the National Front. «This is the triumph of democracy.
The anti-immigration party, once a feared political force in France, never fully recovered from Le Pen's crushing defeat in the runoff of the 2002 presidential race as parties on the left and right joined to defeat him.
Losses in the legislative elections and the 2007 presidential vote sent the anti-immigration party spiraling into debt, and it was forced to sell its headquarters last year.
The far-right won four southern towns in 1995, but later lost them. It looked to Henin-Beaumont, just south of Lille, as a new chance to put its mark on France's political map.