Lucie Castets withdraws from the Isère by-election: “The conditions weren’t right”.

Initially ready to run in the Isère by-election, Lucie Castets, a member of the Nouveau Front Populaire party, has decided not to run. This Thursday, she was still expressing her intention to run for the vacant seat left by Hugo Prévost, deputy for La France Insoumise. However, this Friday, October 18, in a statement sent to AFP, she announced that she was giving up this candidacy, believing that “the conditions have not been met.”

Her name had nevertheless been circulating to represent the alliance of left-wing parties in this constituency, located between Grenoble and its northern suburbs, where La France Insoumise was considering giving her its support. “I’m not going,” she declared, explaining that the circumstances of her candidacy did not allow her to continue playing her role as ‘hyphen of the left’. Castets did, however, stress the importance of ensuring that the left “wins this constituency again.”

A complex political context

Aged 37 and a senior civil servant, Lucie Castets did not wish to sit with the LFI group in the National Assembly, a requirement that Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party considered essential to granting her nomination. This point of disagreement led to her withdrawal from the race to replace Hugo Prévost, who had resigned after being accused of “serious acts against the party”. Going back to his time as head of the Union Étudiante union, close to LFI. Prévost won the seat last July, beating former minister Olivier Véran.

With this resignation, the countdown to the by-election has begun. This should take place within the next three months, fuelling negotiations within the various parties, notably LFI, which had obtained this constituency as part of the founding agreement of the Nouveau Front Populaire, after the dissolution of the National Assembly in June 2024 by Emmanuel Macron.