“Marine gets me shaking,” says Monique Zaouchkevitch, 65, of the party’s charismatic leader Marine Le Pen. A former president of the Red Cross in the nearby town of Cavaillon, Zaouchkevitch had never really followed politics until she heard Le Pen speak. “The people of France have been forgotten,” she says. “But Marine, she’s close to the people.”
Nearby, Jean Truffen, an 80-year-old army veteran, was proudly showing off his collection of National Front membership cards, all of them with Le Pen’s smiling face, which he keeps in his wallet. “I’m not ashamed. I voted for Jean-Marie, now I’m voting for Marine,” he says, referring to Le Pen’s father who ran the party until 2011. “My future is behind me, but I’m voting for the future of France.”
The energy around Le Pen is palpable, particularly in the National Front’s southeastern heartland. Some are hesitant, at first, to admit they are voting for a party with a reputation for xenophobia. Anita, 67, who was packing up her store at a Sunday market in the town of Sorgues, wouldn’t even give her last name, afraid that if people knew who she was voting for, it could affect her business. But she is far from undecided: “I’m voting for Marine.”
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