4 French mayoral races that will show where the presidential race is heading

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Pissevin, a high-rise neighborhood only a 15-minute streetcar experience from the landmark amphitheater, seized nationwide headlines in 2024 when 10-year-old was killed by a stray bullet in a case that is still underneath investigation however which prosecutors consider was linked to drug trafficking.

“Ten to fifteen years in the past, a number of crime got here from petty theft and burglaries. However a number of the inhabitants in underprivileged areas, in search of financial alternatives, turned to the drug commerce, which supplied much more cash and the identical quantity of jail time in the event that they had been caught,” mentioned Salim El Jihad, a Nîmes resident who leads the native nongovernmental group Suburban.

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="640" src="https://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/23/Amphitheatre-Pissevin-Nimes-1024x640.png" alt="" class="wp-image-7821111" srcset="https://www.politico.eu/cdn-cgi/image/width=1024,quality=80,onerror=redirect,format=auto/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/23/Amphitheatre-Pissevin-Nimes.png 1024w, https://www.politico.eu/cdn-cgi/image/width=300,quality=80,onerror=redirect,format=auto/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/23/Amphitheatre-Pissevin-Nimes.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px"/> The Nimes amphitheatre and Pissevin / Supply pictures by way of Getty Pictures

The Nationwide Rally is betting on Nîmes as a symbolic pickup. The race is shaping as much as be a detailed three-way contest between Communist Vincent Bouget, the Nationwide Rally’s Julien Sanchez and conservative Franck Proust, Nîmes’ deputy mayor from 2016 to 2020.

Bouget — who's backed by most different left-wing events, together with average forces just like the Socialist Celebration — informed POLITICO that whereas safety is shaping as much as be an enormous theme within the contest, it raises “a broader query round social buildings.”

“What residents are asking for is extra human presence, together with public companies and social staff,” Bouget mentioned.

Whoever wins will take the reins from Jean-Paul Fournier, the 80-year-old conservative mayor who has saved Nîmes on the fitting with out pause for the previous quarter century.