PARIS (AP) — The Latest on France’s presidential campaign (all times local):
12:25 p.m.
The son of a man killed on the sidelines of a 1995 far-right march has joined French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron on a Paris bridge.
Macron hugged Said Bourram, who was 9 when his father was killed.
Bourram, who supports Macron, says his father was targeted “because he was a foreigner, an Arab. That is why I am fighting, to say no to racism.”
The National Front traditionally holds a march in central Paris on May 1, and at the 1995 event, skinheads broke away and pushed 29-year-old Brahim Bourram off the bridge into the Seine River. Then-party leader Jean-Marie Le Pen sought to distance himself from the attackers, but the death drew national outrage.
Macron faces Le Pen’s daughter Marine, who took over the party, in Sunday’s runoff.
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10:25 a.m.
French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron is paying homage to a Moroccan man killed on the sidelines of a far-right march in 1995.
Macron is seeking to remind voters of the dark past of rival Marine Le Pen’s National Front party, which she has tried to detoxify. Both face off in Sunday’s runoff.
The National Front traditionally holds a march in central Paris on May 1 to honor Joan of Arc, and at the 1995 event, a group of skinheads broke away and pushed 29-year-old Brahim Bourram off a bridge into the Seine River, where he drowned. Then-party leader Jean-Marie Le Pen sought to distance himself from the attackers, but the death drew national outrage.
Macron on Monday is joining Bourram’s son and anti-National Front protesters to honor Bourram’s memory.
–This item has been corrected to show that Macron joined Bourram’s son, not his father.
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10 a.m.
France’s tense presidential race is colliding with May Day labor marches in a campaign dominated by worries over jobs and seen as a test of populism’s global appeal.
Less than a week before Sunday’s runoff, far-right leader Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron are holding separate rallies Monday.
But Le Pen’s efforts to clean up her National Front party’s anti-Semitic image could be undermined by a parallel Paris event by her father, Jean-Marie, expelled from the party over his extreme views.
Meanwhile, the traditional May 1 union marches across France celebrating workers’ rights will be politically charged this year. Some groups want a united front to keep Le Pen from the presidency, but unions fear Macron will dismantle worker protections.