‘Sego’ has style, but substance a question

The victory of Segolene Royal in France’s Socialist Party presidential primary was a case of personality outweighing policy, analysts said Friday.

Her positions throughout the campaign were vague and sometimes even naive. But with a soaring smile, well-coiffed hair and a willingness to mix traditional Socialist views with popular rhetoric, she overcame her more pedantic party foes.

At a rally soon after her victory, Royal sounded a note of optimism, reached out to immigrants and reassured union members. She depicted a future in which France would triumph globally while retaining its generous social welfare programs.

Using language reminiscent of President John F. Kennedy, she urged French citizens to “climb the mountain to victory” with her.

“I am calling all the French, the men and women of our country: Gather yourselves, mobilize yourselves, ask yourselves what you can do for our country. Let’s imagine together a France that will have the courage to face changes without giving up her ideal of freedom, equality and brotherhood.”

The 53-year-old longtime Socialist activist, who would be France’s first female president, has become a media sensation in the last year. She has an uncanny sense for positions that might appeal to the public even though they annoy political regulars.

A few weeks ago she advocated setting up citizen juries that would judge whether government proposals were worthwhile and that could sit in on Cabinet meetings.

Some opponents derided the idea as Maoist or a revival of the French Revolution. But pollsters saw it as a shrewd way to reach out to the people, a signal that she would listen to them.

“A presidential election is above all about choosing a person,” said Pierre Giacometti, a pollster and analyst at Ipsos, a major French polling firm.

The other two Socialist candidates in Thursday’s balloting “underestimated the personal dimension of this vote,” he said. “Segolene Royal understood that to win this election, one has to start by winning public opinion on a personal basis before winning over the public to a political program.”

At least for now she has revived the public’s interest in politics, which in recent years seemed the province of mandarins. The French responded to her direct tone, such as her comment to Time magazine’s Europe edition: “Why should one have to be sad, ugly and boring to go into politics these days?”

People throughout France refer to her by her first name, or as Sego -- an unimaginable level of familiarity for most male politicians here. They like that she holds rallies in cafes as well as at the elite Sorbonne University and that she is a candidate with style, an esteemed attribute in France. Tall and willowy, she wears well-cut suits and has been photographed in a blue bikini while vacationing on the Cote d’Azur.

Whether her approach will stand up to the rigor of a general election campaign, or whether she will be able to adapt in a way that maintains her popularity, is difficult to predict. But so far she has been shrewd in identifying what resonates with the public.

She trounced her two Socialist opponents, former Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn and former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, garnering a little more than 60% of the vote. Polls suggest that in a matchup with her likely opponent, conservative Rally for the Republic Party politician Nicolas Sarkozy, the two would be in a dead heat.

Pollsters say she is the most competitive potential opponent to Sarkozy in part because her politics straddles leftist and centrist positions and she sometimes even adopts stances associated with the right.

“It is impossible to classify her within the Socialist Party,” said Henri Rey, a researcher at the Center for the Study of French Politics in Paris. “You can’t say she’s at the right or center.”

French presidential elections generally involve two rounds of voting and multiple candidates in the first round. Although Royal was successful at unifying the Socialists, she will have to unify the broad political left, which includes the Green Party, with its roots in advocacy for the environment; the Communists; and a host of other smaller parties.

On the tough policy questions she is likely to face in the campaign, it is unclear whether Royal is ready for the challenge. For example, asked recently whether she would support Turkey’s effort to join the European Union, Royal answered evasively: “My opinion is that of the French people.”

And discussing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, she said she opposed Tehran having access to civilian nuclear power, a harder line than that taken by President Bush. Critics responded that she did not understand the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which guarantees signatories -- including Iran -- access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Born in Senegal, the daughter of a conservative army colonel, Royal broke with her family’s politics and joined the Socialist Party. She has served variously as minister of environment, of family and children and of education.

She projects an image that contains elements that might seem contradictory to foreigners but that coexist comfortably in France. She has been a crusader against Internet pornography and sexist advertising, and wants to send lawbreaking youths to boot camp. However, she is also an unmarried mother of four who has lived with her partner, Socialist Party Chairman Francois Hollande, more than 25 years.

The campaign will force the French to confront hard questions about what kind of person they want to lead them, whether they can imagine a woman at the helm, and what sort of approach they want to take toward immigrants and their children, a source of ongoing unrest in the country.

“Nicolas Sarkozy has a very authoritarian approach -- authority to the president. Segolene Royal has a protective approach; she wants to protect the weak,” said pollster Giacometti. “It will be a battle of style, approach and personality.”

alissa.rubin@latimes.com

achrene.sicakyuz@latimes.com

Rubin reported from Sancerre, France, and Sicakyuz from Paris. Staff writer Elisabeth Penz in Vienna contributed to this report.