Battling for France's blue-collar vote and employing all of her political guile, far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen upstaged her centrist rival Emmanuel Macron by making a surprise campaign stop Wednesday to a home appliance factory threatened with closure, reports ABC News.
As Macron was meeting elsewhere with union leaders from the Whirlpool plant in northern France, Le Pen popped up outside the factory itself. Surrounded by workers in bright-yellow hazard vests, she declared herself the candidate of France's workers.
"We'll get you out of here," Le Pen said as she hugged a woman in the crowd outside the plant, its fences festooned with workers' banners. She vowed to not let the factory close if elected in France's presidential runoff on May 7.
"I am the candidate of workers, the candidate of the French who don't want their jobs taken away," she said.
Le Pen's wily campaign maneuver, which French television news channel BFM broadcast live, had the immediate effect of stealing Macron's thunder.
It prompted him to make his own trip to the factory a few hours later — which quickly looked like he had fallen into a trap laid by Le Pen. Live TV coverage of his visit looked chaotic and potentially damaging, with people whistling, booing and chants of "Marine, president!" heard in the background.
"Why didn't you come before?" one woman was heard asking him.
"Save our jobs, Monsieur Macron!" yelled a man.
Earlier, as Le Pen was taking selfies, dispensing hugs and kisses with people outside the threatened plant, Macron was in a closed-door meeting with union leaders in the town of Amiens, dressed in a suit and tie.
The contrasting images — Le Pen smiling with workers; Macron in heated exchanges with them — spoke to her political experience.