From Valérie Pécresse’s nightmarish campaign in 2022, which came in fifth position with 4.78% of the vote, we already knew a lot: the tensions within the Republican (LR) general staff, the vagueness of the strategy politics, the lack of support from ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, and of course the colossal campaign debt that the candidate inherited – which forced her to call for the generosity of activists, having failed to reach the threshold of 5% necessary for reimbursement by the State of half of its expenses.
Ms. Pécresse’s campaign accounts, analyzed by Le Monde after their publication on Tuesday April 18 by the National Commission for Campaign Accounts and Political Funding (CNCCFP), shed light on a new aspect of the President of the Ile-de-France region: a “clash” between the close guard of candidate LR and a service provider close to Bruno Retailleau to whom she had entrusted her communication.
Triumphantly appointed by LR activists at the December 2021 congress, persuaded to cross the 5% mark which only “small” candidates are worried about, Valérie Pécresse has spent accordingly: with her 13.5 million euros, she has led the most expensive campaign behind incumbent President Emmanuel Macron. Offering itself expensive Parisian premises (321,000 euros monthly, for 1,500 m2), huge telephone campaigns (2.6 million euros) and a bloated team (1.6 million euros in salaries), the candidate did not skimp on her digital communication either.
On January 1, 2022, she signed a €1.58 million contract with Qatane, a service provider responsible for managing the campaign’s “overall digital project”. It is up to him to create the website and mobile applications, to set up a video studio, but also to design publications for social networks, videos, parody content, to organize monitoring and to activate influencers at the benefit of the candidate.
The “augmented communication” of someone close to Retailleau
“A golden opportunity” for the consulting firm Qatane, created two weeks earlier, as recognized by its founder, Jean-Baptiste Doat. This young man in his forties is well known in conservative right-wing circles. Former head of the youth movement of Philippe de Villiers (2006-2008), Mr. Doat founded with his wife, in 2015, the non-contract Catholic school Jean-de-la-Fontaine in La-Roche-sur-Yon (Vendée). ), which offers traditional teaching and distributes good points and golden buttons.
At the controls of candidate François Fillon’s “response cell” for the 2017 presidential election, he had caught the eye of Patrick Stefanini, the campaign manager. Five years later, it was this same Mr. Stefanini who introduced him to Valérie Pécresse, whose campaign he now directs. And he too who co-signs, with the financial agent, the contract with Qatane.
Jean-Baptiste Doat loves media stunts: when he was in charge of social networks for the General Council of Vendée, during his working hours he posted messages on the Twitter account MdameMichu, a fake housewife with very Sarkozy accents who tried to mobilize an “uninhibited” right before the elections. He was also the one who registered the dog Clovis for the LR congress in 2021, to show that “the membership system [to the party] was not very serious”, as he admitted to Mediapart. Mr. Doat is above all one of the relatives of the president of the LR group in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau. He was his collaborator at the Pays de la Loire regional council, then at the Senate, before leaving his post in November 2021 to found his “augmented communication” firm, Qatane.
The hopes raised by the first contract, as juicy as it was unexpected, signed with the team of Valérie Pécresse, will however quickly dissipate. After less than six weeks of collaboration, the contract is terminated on February 8. “The services delivered by the Qatane company were not up to the level of the campaign requirements”, explained the campaign team to the CNCCFP, judging the achievements “unsuitable and of insufficient quality”.
“Multiple Hierarchical Layers”
Edouard Fillias, boss of Jin, one of Qatane’s subcontractors, today disputes this harsh judgment: “The collaboration proved difficult with the other people in the campaign. It went badly, there was no listening or points of agreement. A strategic note obtained by Le Monde unrolls a long list of grievances addressed by the service provider to the entourage of the candidate: among other things, the “susceptibilities”, the “respect for prebends” which are “to the detriment of efficiency of a campaign”, the “multiple layers of hierarchy” and the “very personal arbitrations of people inexperienced in presidential campaigns”. This document, sent by Qatane to the “management pole” on January 29, 2022, denounces in short the stranglehold of the teams installed during the primary of the right to the detriment of new entrants.
Jean-Marc Zakhia, Valérie Pécresse’s communications advisor, “thought they had to regain control of the site”, says Jean-Baptiste Doat, who claims to have been “put under the tutelage of Pierre Liscia”, a relative of the candidate LR, elected like her to the regional council of Ile-de-France. “So we stopped the collaboration, on our initiative,” he says. Communication on social networks is taken over by Pierre Liscia, while the keys to the candidate’s websites are handed over to a subcontractor company, Copernic.co, also managed by a former member of the 2017 Fillon campaign. Qatane still pockets 482,000 euros for final settlement.
Contacted, Pierre Liscia did not respond. Patrick Stefanini refused to comment on this episode: “I have nothing to do with anything, I didn’t take care of all that”, assures the former campaign manager of Valérie Pécresse, converted into lobbying. Carefully examined, all the communication expenses of the candidate were finally validated by the CNCCFP, which on December 14 gave the green light to reimbursement by the State of 785,423 euros to Valérie Pécresse, out of the 13.5 million euros swallowed up in his campaign.