Tomorrow likely to be too late for the right in Paris

Bertrand DelanoE was long derided as "what's-his-name?". But the press and public have sniffed victory, and when the Socialist candidate for mayor of Paris arrives at the Daumesnil open-air market, shoppers and photographers crowd round him.

Gone are the days when Mr Delanoe (50) was mistakenly called "Bernard". Forgotten Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Jack Lang, the Socialist "elephants" who planned to stand for mayor in the March 11th and 18th elections. Mr Delanoe looks set to make history by becoming the first left-wing mayor of the French capital in 131 years.

"Bonjour ma petite Michele, bonjour mon petit Christian," he says, kissing Socialist candidates for the 12th arrondissement warmly on both cheeks. An African immigrant greets him as "Monsieur le Maire" and Mr Delanoe smiles wanly. "I am not the mayor," he chides the well-wisher, resisting the temptation to add the word "yet".

The Gaullist President Jacques Chirac turned his 1977-95 stay at city hall into a launching pad for the Elysee Palace. Mr Chirac hand-picked the outgoing mayor, Mr Jean Tiberi, as his successor. But now the Gaullist RPR has repudiated Mr Tiberi - stained by vote-rigging and financial scandals - and fielded the country's grouchiest politician, Mr Philippe Seguin, to fight both Mr Tiberi and Mr Delanoe. The Elysee fears that if the Socialists win, they'll dig documents compromising Mr Chirac out of city hall cupboards.

In 24 years as a municipal councillor, Mr Delanoe learned that all politics is local. He refuses to talk about next year's legislative and presidential elections. As he wanders past the fruit and vegetable stalls, tables laden with olives, oysters and sausage, he listens to the complaints of Parisians. "I hope you will do something for the handicapped," an old man says. He will stop the able-bodied using handicapped parking, Mr Delanoe vows.

Putting his hands on the shoulders of a woman vendor, Mr Delanoe says: "What I really like is being here - not on television." He promises to "fiercely repress" Parisians who allow their dogs to deposit 16 tonnes of dirt on the city's pavements daily, but only after installing brown-paper bag dispensers and conducting an "information campaign".

Like the tortoise who overtakes the hare in La Fontaine's fable, Mr Delanoe is proving that you don't have to be flashy to succeed in politics. A fixture in the Socialist Party since he was 22, Mr Delanoe turned his homosexuality into a non-issue by responding frankly when a television interviewer asked him about it two years ago. His earnest mastery of detail seems to please voters.

The other surprise of the municipal campaign is also a tortoise - called "la tortue" by her hare of a husband, President Jacques Chirac. Bernadette Chirac even keeps a collection of turtle figurines in her Elysee office. Until a few weeks ago, she was considered at best old-fashioned, at worst a liability to her husband. The Chiracs' daughter Claude, who is in charge of the President's image, kept her mother out of magazine photos.

The First Lady has appeared at Gaullist election rallies in half a dozen French cities. To everyone's amazement - including her husband's - the grandmother with the little lizard-skin handbag gave the French right its biggest boost in years. "Fight, fight until the last minute," Mrs Chirac exhorted supporters in Avignon. "You musn't neglect a single vote, a single family, a single club. And you must go back more than once. That's been the experience of Jacques Chirac, to which I'm a witness."

The Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, followed Mrs Chirac to Avignon, to support his employment minister, Ms Elisabeth Guigou, who is fighting an uphill battle for the mayor's office. "I go on the campaign trail myself," Mr Jospin said, mocking Mr Chirac. "I don't send my wife."

But despite his popularity, Mr Jospin had a hard time on the hustings. Farmers threw eggs at him at the Salon de l'agriculture; nurses booed in Avignon.

The "Bernadette phenomenon", said Le Figaro, was "another sign of the end of the 30year cycle started by May 1968 and [the Green politician Daniel] Cohn-Bendit". Because she is "neither too young, nor too thin, nor too feminist", Mrs Chirac, according to the rightwing newspaper, "embodies the Gaullist values of yesterday, which may be those of tomorrow". Maybe. But for the right in Paris, tomorrow will be too late.