Jean-Marie Le Pen Says He Won't Run as a National Front Candidate in France - New York Times

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Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front party in France, with his daughter Marine at at an event last year in Lyon, France. Credit Laurent Cipriani/Associated Press

LONDON — Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the far-right National Front, said on Monday that he would not run in French regional elections this year, underlining a growing feud with his daughter Marine over the party’s future direction.

Ms. Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, has been seeking to transform the party into a mainstream movement by shedding its image as a typically far-right political party, including a perception — fueled by the statements of Mr. Le Pen — that the party has been racist and anti-Semitic in the past.

She has been steadily distancing herself from her firebrand father, Mr. Le Pen, 86, who has drawn criticism for his acerbic comments about the Holocaust, the Roma and immigrants. Mr. Le Pen has several convictions for inciting racial hatred.

The dispute with Ms. Le Pen was blown open last week after Mr. Le Pen defended his statement that the Nazi gas chambers were a mere “detail” of World War II, prompting Ms. Le Pen to demand that his role in the party be reviewed. Mr. Le Pen has also praised France’s collaborationist wartime leader, Marshal Philippe Pétain, and called into question the patriotism of France’s prime minister, Manuel Valls, who was born in Spain.

In a statement after his comments, Ms. Le Pen said she had already told her father that she planned to prevent him from running in coming regional elections.

“Jean-Marie Le Pen seems to have descended into a strategy somewhere between scorched earth and political suicide,” she said. “His status as honorary president does not give him the right to hijack the National Front with vulgar provocations seemingly designed to damage me but which unfortunately hit the whole movement.”

The apparent political patricide has presented a new challenge for the National Front, which has become an increasingly potent political force in recent years. The party’s rise has come as France’s Socialist president, François Hollande, has struggled to resonate with voters, and as the center-right Union for a Popular Movement, or U.M.P., led by former President Nicolas Sarkozy, has been mired in internal divisions.

Like far-right parties across Europe, the National Front, which rails against the European Union, immigration and the excesses of capitalism, has been successfully exploiting resentment against immigrants and growing frustration with a sluggish economy and with a European Union that is seen to be remote from voters’ everyday concerns.

Ms. Le Pen’s attempt to cast the party in a more moderate light helped the National Front to first place in France in last year’s elections for the European Parliament. The party has also performed well in recent local elections.

In an interview with Le Figaro Magazine, in which Mr. Le Pen was asked whether he planned to run in the southeastern region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, he said that he was taking himself out of the race and that he did not want to cause “damage” to the party.

He said the most viable candidate to replace him would be his granddaughter, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, a social conservative who espouses family values.

The outcry over Mr. Le Pen’s comments comes amid growing anxiety in France over anti-Semitism, fanned by recent episodes of violence, including an attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris in January, during which five people, including the gunman, were killed.

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