PARIS (AP) — A French appeals court is set to rule Tuesday on whether Marine Le Pen will be allowed to pursue what would be her fourth presidential campaign — and what many believe would be her best shot yet at leading the country. If the court blocks her, she has already been preparing a potential replacement.
That replacement is Jordan Bardella — but he is far from simply a younger version of Le Pen.
Perhaps the most significant difference between the two is one that cannot be changed: Bardella does not carry the Le Pen name. For a substantial portion of French voters, especially those on the political left, that surname carries deeply negative associations. Marine Le Pen inherited both the name and the party from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the organization and was widely despised for his far-right views and repeated legal violations, among them Holocaust denial.
If Tuesday’s court ruling bars Le Pen from next year’s election — the race to succeed two-term President Emmanuel Macron, who is constitutionally prohibited from seeking another term — or if it leads her to step aside in favor of Bardella, French voters will be weighing the two National Rally figures against one another.
Bardella currently serves as president of National Rally, the party Jean-Marie Le Pen originally founded in 1972 under the name National Front. Under Bardella’s leadership, the party has continued pushing its anti-immigration message. He has spoken of a France he describes as being overwhelmed by immigration, particularly from Africa, saying there are “many people who today no longer recognize the France that they loved.”
Where Bardella differs from Le Pen is in his approach to economic issues. He has worked to appeal to business owners and wealthier conservative voters with a more pro-business tone, while Le Pen has traditionally concentrated on cost-of-living concerns and government intervention — themes that tend to resonate with working-class supporters.
Le Pen handed the party’s leadership to Bardella in 2022, after years of working to make the organization more appealing to mainstream voters. That effort included distancing herself from her father — ultimately expelling him from the party — and walking back some of her more controversial policy positions, such as calls for France to exit the European Union and abandon the euro in favor of the old French franc.
The party has operated under the National Rally name since 2018 and became the largest single party in the National Assembly in 2024.
Luc Rouban, a senior researcher at Sciences Po, a Paris school of political sciences, who studies the party, says not carrying the Le Pen name could actually work in Bardella’s favor. “Symbolically, it would signal a break with the legacy of the old National Front, of Jean-Marie Le Pen,” he said.
That legacy has long been a liability for Marine Le Pen. Critics and historians have repeatedly tied her to her father’s associations with those who collaborated with Nazi occupiers during World War II, as well as his hate-speech convictions. Bardella, as the first party leader without the Le Pen name, may not face that same line of attack as effectively.
“Jean-Marie Le Pen’s legacy is a very heavy burden to carry,” Rouban said. “If you move beyond the Le Pen family, you’re entering different territory.”
Le Pen herself, who is 57, has spoken positively about Bardella’s age — he is 30. “We are complementary,” she said in a recent interview. “I have a certain experience, but Jordan has an absolutely incredible dynamism; he has the strength and energy of his youth.”
Bardella also has a stronger presence on social media. His Instagram following is nearly double Le Pen’s, and his 2.3 million TikTok followers surpass her 1.5 million. That digital reach could help him connect with younger voters — a group that has increasingly tuned out national elections. France’s national statistics agency found that only 17% of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 cast ballots consistently in 2022, when Macron defeated Le Pen in the presidential runoff for the second time. That figure is a sharp drop from 31% who voted consistently back in 2002.
Le Pen grew up surrounded by politics. Her father served in the legislature from 1956 to 1962, before she was born in 1968. She joined the National Front as a teenager and, after earning a law degree, first ran as a candidate at age 24 in the 1993 legislative elections.
Bardella, by contrast, has built his political career primarily in the European Parliament. Some analysts argue his comparatively limited experience could make it harder for him to connect with older voters, and that he might struggle under the intense pressure of a first presidential campaign.
However, Victor Mallet, the author of “Far-Right France: Le Pen, Bardella and the Future of Europe,” cautions against underestimating him. “A lot of people thought the same thing about Donald Trump,” Mallet said. “They thought, you know, this guy has no experience of government, his policies don’t make any sense, and he was elected twice.”
