Chesnot/Getty Images(PARIS) — French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen announced Monday that she is temporarily stepping down from her party’s leadership as she battles for the presidency. She will face off against Emmanuel Macron during the second round of the election on May 7.

“I’m taking a leave of absence as president of @FN_officiel [the Front National]; I’m now simply a candidate in the presidential election,” Le Pen tweeted from her official account.

Le Pen and Macron bested nine other candidates to advance past the first round of voting on Sunday. They will now spend two weeks fighting for votes ahead of the second and final round.

Her decision to step down from the leadership of the National Front party appears to be an attempt to broaden her appeal as she and Macron battle to gain the support of voters who backed losing candidates in the first round of voting.

Since the results of the first round of voting became clear, Macron has enjoyed a number of high-profile endorsements, including from French President François Hollande and Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.

The National Front’s image has been tarnished by the reputation of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who led the party until his daughter took it over in 2011.

The elder Le Pen was widely rebuked for calling Nazi gas chambers “a detail of history.”

Marine Le Pen has denounced these remarks and worked to broaden her party’s appeal.

The two opposing French candidates received tacit support from two opposing U.S. politicians in the lead up to the first round vote.

President Donald Trump, while not offering a formal endorsement, said in an interview that Le Pen was “the strongest on what’s been going on in France.”

Former President Barack Obama, meanwhile, phoned Macron to wish him well ahead of the vote. Obama’s spokesman said it was not an official endorsement.</s>Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front did not deliver posters in time for them to appear outside voting booths abroad, the French Foreign Ministry said Sunday.

“The posters are printed by the candidates themselves and it is up to them to hand them in to the electoral commission before the deadline” of April 10, the ministry said.

It said “only 10” of the 11 candidates did this in time — meaning their posters appear at polling stations abroad.

“The posters for the candidate Marine Le Pen were not provided so the corresponding poster board is empty,” the ministry added.

Large metal boards are erected outside polling stations in France, with campaign posters for the 11 candidates.

Around 1.3 million French people abroad are registered to vote — representing around 2 percent of the total electorate.

France went to the polls Sunday under high security for a vote that is seen as crucial for the future of the country and the European Union.

Far-right Le Pen is seen as one of the front-runners but opinion polls suggest an extremely close race and any two of the four top candidates have a fighting chance to make it to the all-important run-off on May 7.</s>French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has announced that she is temporarily stepping down as head of her National Front party.

Monday's move appears to be a way for Le Pen to embrace a wide range of potential voters ahead of the May 7 runoff between herself and Emmanuel Macron, the independent centrist who came in first in Sunday's first round.

"Tonight, I am no longer the president of the National Front. I am the presidential candidate," she said on French public television news.

Le Pen has said in the past that she is not a candidate of her party, and made that point when she rolled out her platform in February, saying the measures she was espousing were not her party's, but her own.

Le Pen has worked to bring in voters from the left and right for several years, cleaning up her party's racist, anti-Semitic image to do so.</s>HENIN-BEAUMONT, France (AP) - Marine Le Pen's steely resolve, helped by a cutting tongue, propelled her political career, but it was her masterful use of a soft touch that has brought her one step away from the French presidency.

With that shift, Le Pen has widened her National Front party's appeal to voters once too timid for the extreme right. And this time, in France's May 7 presidential runoff, she is hoping to accomplish what her father could not when he ran in 2002.

She pledged Monday to "put France back in order."

Singing the French national anthem and smiling broadly after Sunday's first-round presidential vote launched her into the runoff with centrist Emmanuel Macron, Le Pen said her National Front party will represent "the great alternative" for French people frustrated with the status quo. Standing before an adoring crowd in her northern stronghold of Henin-Beaumont, Le Pen pledged to open a debate on globalization, which she says has bled France's working class.

The final days of the presidential campaign were upended by an attack claimed by the Islamic State group that killed a police officer on Paris' Champs-Elysees, feeding into one of Le Pen's central themes. She wants to build a secure sovereign state by cracking down on what she calls the "massive immigration" of radical Muslims who she says are trying to supplant France's Judeo-Christian heritage.

If elected president, Le Pen vowed to immediately put in place a "battle plan against Islamic terrorism ... so that France lives!" It was not clear what effect the attack had on the vote Sunday.

To her backers in this depressed northern region, Le Pen is a hero. Yet others fear her far-right party, saying the changes she has made to scrub its image of racism are merely cosmetic.

At 48, Le Pen, the mother of three, is an ambitious, bold and gritty leader who defied the old guard of her far-right National Front party. She expelled many of them to try to remove the taint of racism and anti-Semitism that clung to the party under the leadership of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. In 2015, she did not shirk from pushing him out of the party he founded in 1972, when he refused to desist from anti-Semitic provocations that were undermining his daughter's presidential bid.

"There was a Jean-Marie Le Pen era. Now it's a Marine Le Pen era," said Vincent Christian, 56, a retired gendarme and long-time National Front supporter at her election-night party Sunday.

"It's a turning point for France," said pastry chef Frederic Moirez, 33, of nearby Raimbeaucourt. "Only she can do something, make France move and put order in the country."

Macron came in first in Sunday's vote, with just over 23 percent while Le Pen had 21 percent. That means Le Pen has already done better than in 2012, when she came in third in the presidential vote a year after taking over the National Front.

The 2012 defeat only reinforced her desire to win. Since then, she has used local, regional and European elections to build a party machine to serve her ambitions. In 2014, the National Front won 11 towns in municipal elections, and her party performed better than any in France in the European Parliament election.

First a lawyer, then a politician, Le Pen has served as a European lawmaker since 2004, and since 2010 as a regional councilor for the northern region of France.

Born Marion Anne Perrine Le Pen in 1968 in a western Paris suburb, the youngest of three daughters, the far-right leader was weaned on family dramas. Le Pen has written that she was "raised on honey and the acid of politics," a reference to her privileged life and the weight of her larger-than-life father.

"To be the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen was not always easy," she said recently on the BFM TV station. But to be his daughter was to follow in his footsteps, she suggested, calling politics "the virus one has within."

One of the challenges included an attack that destroyed the family apartment building as 8-year-old Marine and her sisters slept.

The French media relished recounting the divorce of her parents in her teen years. In a reflection of that bitter separation, her mother, Pierrette Lalanne, posed for Playboy in 1987, partly dressed in a maid's costume. The magazine quoted her as saying she was responding to her husband's Playboy interview in which he said she could become a housekeeper if she needed money.

For years, Marine Le Pen had no relations with her mother, but today "there is lots of love between Mama and me," she said.

Le Pen is nothing if not loyal. Old friends from her days studying law in Paris, members of a radical student group known for violence and anti-Semitism, hold crucial roles in her inner circle - and are at the center of an alleged party financing scheme. The affair, to be heard in court, raises unanswered questions about Le Pen herself as she balances radical forces within the party with people she has won over from the mainstream left and right.

For Le Pen, it's not her father but "eternal France" that inspires her.

"Like mother's love, the love of France is not explained, it is lived," she once wrote.</s>French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has announced she is temporarily stepping down as head of her National Front party.

Monday's move appears to be an attempt to appeal to a wider range of potential voters ahead of the May 7 run-off between herself and Emmanuel Macron, the independent centrist who came in first in Sunday's first round.

It would also appear that Le Pen realises association with the toxic National Front party, which has a history of intolerance and racism, will scupper her chances of being elected.

The brazen move to disassociate herself from the party she has led since 2011 can be seen as an attempt to hoodwink voters in the battle for France's heart and soul.

"Tonight, I am no longer the president of the National Front. I am the presidential candidate," she said on French public television news.

Le Pen has said in the past that she is not a candidate of her party, and made that point when she rolled out her platform in February, saying the measures she was espousing were not her party's, but her own.

She has worked to bring in voters from the left and right for several years, attempting to clean up her party's racist, anti-Semitic image to do so, but the party remains a totem of right wing extremism in France and beyond.

She took over leadership of the party from her controversial father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was leader for almost 40 years since its foundation in 1972.

He has been found guilty of racism or inciting racial hatred on a number of occasions, as well as being found guilty by a Munich court of "minimizing the Holocaust, which caused the deaths of six million Jews".</s>French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has announced that she is temporarily stepping down as head of her National Front party.

Monday’s move appears to be a way for Le Pen to embrace a wide range of potential voters ahead of the May 7 runoff between herself and Emmanuel Macron, the independent centrist who came in first in Sunday’s first round.

“Tonight, I am no longer the president of the National Front. I am the presidential candidate,” she said on French public television news.

Le Pen has said in the past that she is not a candidate of her party, and made that point when she rolled out her platform in February, saying the measures she was espousing were not her party’s, but her own.

Le Pen has worked to bring in voters from the left and right for several years, cleaning up her party’s racist, anti-Semitic image to do so.

Final results from the election’s first round show that Macron got nearly 1 million more votes than Le Pen, with both advancing to the May 7 runoff.

Macron collected 8.66 million votes, or 24.01%, while Le Pen garnered 7.68 million votes, or 21.30%, according to the official final count published by the Interior Ministry.

Conservative candidate Francois Fillon got 20.01%, and left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, 19.58% of the vote. The other seven candidates were far behind.

Turnout was 77.77%, the lowest in a French presidential election for 15 years.</s>French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has announced that she is temporarily stepping down as head of her National Front party.

Monday’s move appears to be a way for Le Pen to embrace a wide range of potential voters ahead of the May 7 runoff between herself and Emmanuel Macron, the independent centrist who came in first in Sunday’s first round.

“Tonight, I am no longer the president of the National Front. I am the presidential candidate,” she said on French public television news.

Le Pen has said in the past that she is not a candidate of her party, and made that point when she rolled out her platform in February, saying the measures she was espousing were not her party’s, but her own.

Le Pen has worked to bring in voters from the left and right for several years, cleaning up her party’s racist, anti-Semitic image to do so.

Final results from the election’s first round show that Macron got nearly 1 million more votes than Le Pen, with both advancing to the May 7 runoff.

Macron collected 8.66 million votes, or 24.01%, while Le Pen garnered 7.68 million votes, or 21.30%, according to the official final count published by the Interior Ministry.

Conservative candidate Francois Fillon got 20.01%, and left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, 19.58% of the vote. The other seven candidates were far behind.

Turnout was 77.77%, the lowest in a French presidential election for 15 years.</s>Conservative French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has a real chance of winning the election, and it’s leaving liberal citizens distraught. The National Front leader is anti-immigration and anti-EU, and has a list of even more frightening policies. Learn more about her here!

Marine Le Pen, 48, is currently in a close second place in the runoff of the French presidential election, gaining ground on current front-runner Emmanuel Macron, 39. Macron is running without the backing of a political party, making this the first time main left-wing or right-wing parties don’t have a candidate in the second round. In the first round of the election, Macron won 23.8% of votes, while Le Pen took 21.5%. Marine won a stunning 7.6 million votes on April 23, which is the strongest result ever for a Front National candidate.

Marine is the leader of the National Front/Front National, France’s right-wing populist and nationalist political party. The party, founded in 1972, has opposed the European Union since its formation, and is anti-immigration. National Front also promotes zero tolerance toward law and order issues, and is for economic protectionism — restricting trade between countries. Marine became the leader of the party in 2011, succeeding her own father, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Jean-Marie was extremely controversial, and Marine became popular after softening the party’s image. She turned the National Front into one of France’s largest political parties, the most popular among 18-34 year old citizens, according to a 2016 poll.

Marine Le Pen — See Pics Of The French Presidential Candidate

3. Her campaign platform is extremely conservative

Marine, aligning with the right-wing ideals of the National Front, has a majorly conservative platform for her presidency. She’s campaigned on the “automatic” deportation of illegal immigrants, as well as only allowing 10,000 immigrants into France per year. She wants “extremist” mosques closed, a fixed retirement age at 60, a 35-hour work week, and a “new” EU. Additionally, she wants social housing to go to French nationalists before anyone else.

4. Her partner is the vice president of the National Front

Marine has been in a relationship with the vice president of the National Front, Louis Aliot, 47, since 2009. He was also the head of Le Pen’s presidential campaign in 2012, and served as her spokesperson. She was previously married to Franck Chauffroy, from 1995 to 2000, and married to Eric Lorio, from 2002 to 2006. She has three children from her marriage to Franck — Jehanne, 17, Louis, 18, and Mathilde Chauffroy, 18.

Her father, Jean-Marie, was a radical and extremist political leader. Her family survived a bombing at their home in 1976 as they slept in their beds meant for Jean-Marie. The bomb exploded in the stairwell of their apartment building, blasting a hole in the outside wall. Marine, her sisters Yann and Marie Caroline, and her parents were unharmed.

HollywoodLifers, do you think Marine Le Pen will win the French presidential election? Let us know!</s>Recent Terrorism Has Played Right Into The Hands Of Marine Le Pen

Journalist Mark Mistry joins Dean Richards LIVE from Bordeaux, France to give the latest on the French Presidential Election and its impending impact on Western politics and how terrorism abroad, Brexit and the election of President Donald Trump may play a role in the voting.</s>The far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s place in the second-round of the French presidential election cements her Front National party’s steady rise and growing presence on the country’s political landscape.



Le Pen took the highest score her party has ever registered in a French presidential election, but while her father Jean-Marie Le Pen sparked a political earthquake 15 years ago by reaching the final round, this time there was little surprise.

Polls had predicted for months that her popularity was growing among an electorate that was disillusioned and angry at the political class and keen to send the harshest political message that it was time for change.

“This result is historic,” she told supporters on Sunday night. “It puts on me a huge responsibility to defend the French nation, its unity, its security, its culture, its prosperity and its independence. The main thing at stake in this election is the rampant globalisation that is endangering our civilisation.”

But Le Pen enters the next two weeks of final-round campaigning as the underdog. All polls suggest that tactical voters from left and right will join together against her – as they did in the regional elections of 2015 – and make her chances of winning on 7 May slim.



The French voting system, in which a second round takes place two weeks after the first, does not usually favour her anti-immigration and anti-European Union party. Polling by Cevipof has shown that more than half of French people think she is a danger to democracy – and the majority do not want her to win the presidential election. But she is nonetheless expected to improve on her first round score and greatly narrow the gap with the winner, far more than her father did in 2002 when he took 18% to Jacques Chirac’s 82% in the final vote.

The central message of Marine Le Pen’s campaign was the staple of the Front National party since it was co-founded by her father in 1972: keeping France for the French. She promised to give priority to French people over non-nationals in jobs, housing and welfare, and would hold a referendum to cement this policy into the constitution. She said she would demand extra tax from companies that employed any kind of foreign worker.

In the final days of the campaign, she returned firmly to the main concern of her electorate: immigration. She went further than she had done before by promising to immediately suspend all legal immigration in order to reassess what she called the “uncontrollable situation” of foreigners coming into France.

Le Pen also railed against what she called “Islamic fundamentalism”, promising to clamp down on certain types of preaching and organisations. She promised a ban on religious symbols, including the Muslim headscarf, from all public places. “A multicultural society is a multiconflict society,” she said in a speech in Paris. “I want every French person, no matter where they are in France, to maintain their liberty and their rights that Islamic fundamentalists want to deny them.” Her supporters shouted “this is our country!” at her rallies.

Le Pen set out to style the election as a battle of “patriots” on her side against “globalists” such as the independent centrist Emmanuel Macron on the other. She said only she understood the “forgotten” peripheral France, hit by unemployment and fears for the future, neglected by the privileged elites of cosmopolitan cities.

Thursday’s attack in which a police officer was shot dead on Paris’s Champs-Elysées gave Le Pen a last chance to press home her security agenda. “The nightmare is beginning again,” she said, promising to deport foreigners on a watchlist of suspected Islamist radicals. 



A short campaign film showed children sleeping in bed at night and implied Le Pen was the only person who could protect them against terrorism. “It’s 3am, the phone rings at the Elysée, there’s a grave and imminent threat to France. Who would you want to pick up the phone?”

Donald Trump said Le Pen was the strongest French candidate and she was boosted among her party faithful by Britain’s Brexit vote last year. She said she would hold an in-out referendum soon after taking office, after negotiations to change France’s position in the EU. She said she would immediately pull out of Europe’s Schengen borderless zone. She promised a return to “national monetary sovereignty” even though her plans to leave the euro were once seen as hindering her party’s progression among older and retired people on the right.

Le Pen began her campaign much earlier than the other candidates, free of any party primaries, but it seemed to be flagging towards the end and she dipped in polls.

She was asked on a radio programme this month about a major wartime roundup of Jews in Paris. She said France as a nation was not responsible, only “those who were in power at the time”, sparking fury from Jewish organisations. Le Pen argued that modern France should not be locked in a permanent repentance and that the “real” France was General de Gaulle’s Resistance not the “illegal” Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime.

She went further than her Holocaust-denying father had ever done in slamming the Vichy regime as illegal but the comments backfired and threatened to damage her efforts to “detoxify” the party’s image. “Her mistake was to think that she could make a comment about the second world war,” said one French political observer. “Anything about the war will always drag the party back to Jean-Marie Le Pen and his negative image.”

She also faced allegations of illegal party funding through fake jobs paid for by EU parliament funds and campaign funding irregularities in France.

She claimed she was the “victim” of a system ganging up against her and appeared at first to be unscathed. But as the campaign drew on, it was harder to avoid the quips of other candidates. After she refused to attend questioning by judges in the case, she was attacked by the anti-capitalist candidate Philippe Poutou in a TV debate. He said the working class were not lucky enough to have the “immunity” from the law that she was seeking.

She also faced protests at some rallies: Corsican nationalists on the island of Corsica and leftwing demonstrators in Paris.

The presidential race is not the only key election for Le Pen. Crucial for the party are the parliamentary elections in June. The Front National has only two out of 577 MPs and need at least 15 MPs to form a political group in parliament, but they believe this is now within reach.
Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen announces she is stepping down as leader of the National Front.