Paris mayoral hopeful Dati takes campaign inspiration from New York’s Mamdani

A glance at Rachida Dati’s social media profiles shows the long-term Les Républicains (LR) politician and current culture minister getting to grips with the gritty side of the city of light.

In one video she appears early in the morning with rubbish collectors, in another with drug addicts in a city centre tunnel, and in yet another with homeless people near the Pompidou Centre, a modern art museum.

The clips highlight what Dati sees as the failings of current Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, criticising the city’s lack of cleanliness, the neighbourhoods where social issues persist and Hidalgo’s sweeping environmental changes, which have changed the aesthetic of the French capital.

It appears the message is hitting home – Dati’s TikTok videos are amassing millions of views.

“It's extremely effective. Wherever we go, people talk to us about it,” Agnès Évren, an LR senator from Paris told AFP, adding that she thought the clips were a way to “convey a political message” to audiences who are not exposed to traditional media.

‘Reaching out’

Dati, who will be tried on corruption charges in September, has said she hopes the videos will show an elected official who is connected to the city’s inhabitants and wants to solve problems.

“My campaign is about reminding Parisians that a mayor is there to look after them and respond to their concerns,” she says in one video, promising to continue “reaching out to Parisians” if she is elected.

On the campaign trail, she has almost entirely shunned mainstream media and refused to debate with the other mayoral candidates – a stark departure from the more traditional campaign she ran in the 2020 mayoral race.

The strategy of placing social media and the city’s inhabitants at the heart of her communications is reminiscent of New York mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wildly successful election campaign that saw him take office in early November – but will it work for Dati?

Known for her sharp tongue and reputation as the most feared woman in Paris, Dati does not have Mamdani’s easy social media presence nor, perhaps, his galvanising message.

Mamdani was a political outsider and a democratic socialist who ran a campaign centred on affordability in a city where the soaring cost of living crisis has left inhabitants struggling to keep up.

“Mamdani really spoke to the needs of working New Yorkers,” said FRANCE 24’s New York correspondent Jessica Le Masurier, commenting on the “joyful” scenes on the night of his election victory.

Centre-right Dati is already a powerful political player who served as justice minister under former president Nicolas Sarkozy and is France’s current culture minister. Her plan for Paris is a right-leaning focus on cleanliness, security and mobility, but her messaging has been contradictory.

She wants to both strengthen the city’s cleaning teams and privatise waste collection, end rules to create more social housing yet provide it “for those who work and need it”, and relax rent controls while keeping the working and middle classes in the capital.

Dati’s economic plan aspires to balance the indebted city’s books by lowering the cost of parking, which she says will also fund an expansive wish list.

This includes plans to double the number of municipal police officers, overhaul extracurricular activities for children, renovate 10,000 social housing units each year, create drug addiction treatment centres, make the metro fully accessible for disabled people and renovate the Place de la République, the banks of the Seine and municipal swimming pools.

‘The reality of Paris’

When Dati presented her mayoral plans on February 10 – her only campaign event to which the media has been invited – she said it had been “inspired by meetings with citizens”.

She then handed over the microphone to let Paris inhabitants speak for themselves about the issues that impact their daily lives. One resident spoke about cleanliness, a resident of the 9th arrondissement (district) shared her views on the greening of public spaces, and another spoke about the drug addiction problem in the 19th arrondissement.

Dati said the issues were “linked to the culture of excuse-making in Paris”, notably among politicians on the left.

“Why do we make videos? Because we are showing the reality of Paris,” she added.

Meanwhile one of Dati’s main rivals, leftist candidate and a former deputy mayor under Hidalgo, Emmanuel Grégoire, has accused Dati of “pure theatre” and “raw demagoguery” for using videos that exploit human misery.

Aside from his social media campaign, Mamdani energised voters with a hopeful message. He has said his election success was down to his team of tens of thousands of volunteers who pounded the pavements and knocked on doors around New York.

Dati has not galvanised a comparable support base, but she is extending her reach beyond the voters in traditionally wealthy right-wing areas. She has stepped up filming in the typically working-class, left-wing 11th, 18th, 19th and 20th arrondissements.

Canvassing in these neighbourhoods may pay off – voting reforms for this year’s municipal elections mean that voters will be able to cast ballots directly for their preferred mayoral candidate.

“Until now, right-wing votes in so-called left-wing districts didn't count. But with the reform of the voting system, every vote will count,” said Pierre Liscia, the LR candidate standing for mayor of the 19th arrondissement.  

“Rachida Dati is right to campaign in eastern Paris, where many voters feel abandoned by the left,” he added.

Dati is expected to resign from her government role in the coming days to focus entirely on her mayoral campaign.

“My programme can be implemented immediately. I will keep my promises, and Parisians will see this within the first 100 days,” she said on Tuesday.

Key facts about the vote for Paris’s new mayor

The first round of voting in France’s municipal elections will take place on March 15 with a run-off vote on March 22.

The addition of a second ballot is a change implemented in 2026 in Paris, Lyon and Marseille. In Paris, voters will vote twice at both votes to select their arrondissement's councillors and members of the Paris Council (members of which select the mayor).

There are six candidates standing for Paris mayor:

• Socialist centre-right candidate Emmanuel Grégoire and hard-left France Unbowed candidate Sophia Chikirou on the political left.
• Conservative LR candidate Rachida Dati and far-right Horizons candidate Pierre-Yves Bournazel on the right.
• Far-right National Rally candidate Thierry Mariani and far-right Reconquête! candidate Sarah Knafo.

This article was adapted by Joanna York. Click here to read the original in French.