Politics Bordelaise

French newspapers called it "the Battle of Bordeaux." What began as a routine by-election set for this week to elect a Deputy to the French National Assembly has turned into a fracas that could change the drift of French politics for some time to come.

It started mildly enough when Gaullist Premier Jacques Chaban-Delmas announced his candidacy for re-election to the National Assembly from Bordeaux. The French constitution provides that every Deputy of the National Assembly be elected with an alternate. When Chaban-Delmas became France's Premier last year, he was obliged to relinquish his Assembly seat to his alternate. This July, however, his alternate died, thus forcing Chaban-Delmas to run in the Bordeaux by-election. It looked so easy. The port city has given Chaban-Delmas the nod in every election since 1946. But when members of the perennially feud-ridden non-Communist left failed to agree on an opposition candidate, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber announced his candidacy on the Radical Party ticket, and suddenly it was a whole new contest.

A maverick journalist-politician, J-J S-S only recently won a Deputy's seat from Nancy (TIME, July 6). What gave the race added curiosity value was the fact that neither man will serve if elected. Both Chaban-Delmas and J-J S-S have announced that they will retain their present offices. Chaban-Delmas has said he will turn the Bordeaux Deputy's post over to his alternate, and J-J S-S will probably resign.

Gadfly Savior. Since the Communists are the only opposition party with any claim to real cohesion or strength in France, J-J S-S cast himself as something of a gadfly savior of the French left --and indeed of French democracy. Servan-Schreiber's political battle plan calls for the creation of a viable non-Communist alternative to the firmly en trenched Gaullist majorities, with himself, naturally, as its leader.

To accomplish this he roared into last summer's Nancy election with all the pizazz of a Kennedy seeking re-election in Massachusetts. He won with a surprisingly wide margin (55%), and tried the same techniques in Bordeaux --the frantic jetting from place to place, the restless copying machine ever churning out press releases, the coveys of attractive, midiskirted female assistants. He spoke endlessly in schools and public halls, garnering crowds of 2,000 and more--something unheard of in Bordeaux elections. As usual, he attracted hordes of newsmen complete with television lights and cameras. The sober daily Le Monde had a phrase for it: pop politique.

By contrast, Chaban-Delmas, a World War II Resistance hero, conducted a cool, low-key campaign. He hardly hit the hustings, concentrating instead on a few polite dinners and speeches. At the height of the J-J S-S blitz, Chaban-Delmas picked up the pace, but only a bit. Undoubtedly he figured his past popularity and present eminence would pull him through.

One year ago, Chaban-Delmas proclaimed a Nouvelle Societe for France. His New Society has been modestly successful but hardly spectacular. There have been strikes, but not too many of them. Manpower training has been launched and legislation to aid the aging enacted. For the first time in recent history, education has been allotted a higher portion of the French national budget for 1971 than defense (17% v. 16%). Progress has been made with labor unions in the nationalized industries to link pay raises for workers with productivity and cost-of-living indexes. What Chaban-Delmas has not been able to do is bring a halt to inflation, modernize the economy and reshape the rigid conservative structure of French society, known in the current parlance as la societe bloquee. Unblocking that society and recasting it in a more progressive mold is Servan-Schreiber's foremost goal.

Long Odds. Why did J-J S-S risk a race against such long odds--and for a seat he had no intention of occupying? Because he stood to win vastly more than he could lose. Bordeaux is traditionally a Gaullist stronghold. J-J S-S was determined to test the status quo as well as dramatize his own political appeal. J-J S-S announced that he would quit as secretary-general of his Radical Party if he failed to pull in at least 30% of the votes. Because he started out as an interloper with about half that figure in the polls, anything even close to 30% in a field of nine candidates could easily be construed as a moral victory--and a pre-election sampling showed him getting closer to his goal. As for Chaban-Delmas, even if he did not gain an outright majority on the first ballot, he was considered a sure bet to win a runoff.

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