On The Stump For Macron - In Florida

 A French expat’s quest to become an En Marche legislator.

 “There’s an Obama moment, a Kennedy moment, taking place”.

- Eric Schine and Sandrine Rastello

A few days after defeating Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election, Emmanuel Macron addressed a group of more than 400 ardent supporters at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. Each had been vetted to represent Macron’s new party, La République en Marche, or Republic on the Move, in France’s fast-approaching legislative elections in June. Among the diverse crowd of mostly political neophytes hoping to win a seat in France’s National Assembly was a 50-year-old French born money manager, Roland Lescure.

“It was amazing,” says Lescure, who in April quit his C$2.6 million-a-year job ($1.9 million) as chief investment officer of Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec, Canada’s second- largest pension fund manager, to stump for Macron full time. “This guy came in, there was a standing ovation for literally five minutes on the part of people, most of whom had never met him but who had worked their butts off for months to help him get elected.”

Lescure, who lives in Montreal, is competing for one of the 11 legislative seats accorded France’s 1.3 million expatriates. It’s an unusual though not unique arrangement—Italy and Romania have similar systems—first used in 2012 to give the French diaspora a greater voice in elections and a link to the homeland.