Suddenly, he's everywhere. Karim Bouamrane, who has been active in the French political microcosm for 30 years, is having his 15 minutes of fame. Unknown to the general public, the 51-year-old Socialist made a dazzling media breakthrough thanks to the Paris Olympics, part of which took place in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Ouen, where he has been mayor since 2020. After Saint-Ouen's partnership with Los Angeles, which will host the 2028 Summer Olympics, The New York Times published a long profile of Bouamrane on April 12. It led to a flurry of laudatory articles about him in the international press. The German daily Die Welt even ran an article with the headline "Obama von der Seine" ("Obama from the Seine").
On August 17, a new profile in Le Figaro Magazine titled "Karim Bouamrane, the face of the other left," in which the Socialist mayor pleads for a "coalition" and criticizes radical left party La France Insoumise (LFI) for "handing out good and bad left-wing points" and "dividing in the country by focusing on ethno-religious communities," prompted enthusiastic comments on X from members of the anti-LFI left. "Respect," wrote the leader of the Socialist senators, Patrick Kanner. "Motivating!" said former Socialist MP Valérie Rabault.
"There's always something going on in Seine-Saint-Denis, a land of talent, and Karim is one of them," said former Socialist president of the Assemblée Nationale Claude Bartolone, referring to the department where Saint-Ouen is located, the poorest area in mainland France. Former Socialist heavyweight Julien Dray, who has left the party, sees "the excellent mayor of Saint-Ouen" as "the next generation of the left."
"A star is born," summed up François Hollande's former adviser Gaspard Gantzer, who sees him as nothing less than a future president of France.
The Socialist has solid backing, ranging from former urban policy minister Jean-Louis Borloo who – privately – sees him going all the way to the Elysée, to the banker Matthieu Pigasse (a member of the Le Monde Group's supervisory board), who praises his sense of "compromise" and the way his friend has "transformed his city, calming it down and making it more attractive." Bouamrane also maintains excellent relations with Macronist ex-minister Clément Beaune, also in favor of a broad coalition in the Assemblée, where there is no majority.
All this attention eventually attracted the eye of the Elysée, where Bouamrane is seen as an interesting profile. In the game of predicting who will be the next prime minister, made up of decoys and leaked names, his is one of the most cited these days. After appointing a woman (Elisabeth Borne), then the youngest prime minister of the Fifth Republic (Gabriel Attal), the promotion of the son of a Moroccan bricklayer, who contributed to the success of the Olympics, would immediately go down in history. Even if Bouamrane, who professes "universalist" principles, hates being reduced to his family origins.
You have 41.22% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.