When the verdict from a Paris criminal court flashed across screens in Hénin-Beaumont, many customers in the Café de la Paix received it with the outrage and disappointment Marine Le Pen predicted.
The far-right political leader was found guilty embezzlement, sentenced to four years in prison — two years suspended, two in a form of house arrest — and fined more than $100,000.
But most stinging was the decision barring her from running for public office for five years, rendering her ineligible to run in France’s 2027 presidential election.
For people here, Ms. Le Pen is not just the leader of the National Rally, and three-time presidential candidate. She is their local lawmaker in the lower house of Parliament.
“I am disgusted,” said Jean-Marc Sergheraert, 70, a retired charity manager, craning up at a big television screen. There, Ms. Le Pen was denouncing the decision as politically motivated and unjust because, she said, her sentence would be enforced even as she appealed it, which is often not the case in France.
“She is right,” added Mr. Sergheraert. “She must defend herself and go right to the end. If they want us to take the Capitol like they did in Washington, I will go to the Élysée,” he said, referring to the presidential palace in Paris.
Nearby, Arlette Banderlique, 86, concurred over her flute of light beer. “Forbidding French to do something just pushes us more to do it,” she said. “She will get millions more votes.”
Ms. Le Pen said she would appeal the ruling, though it would be difficult to resolve her challenge in time for 2027. She was convicted of diverting European Parliament funds to her party.
“This decision should disgust everyone. It’s totally arbitrary,” said Steeve Briois, the National Rally mayor of Hénin-Beaumont, handing out fliers encouraging locals to stand up, peacefully, against “those who would circumvent democracy.”
If any place in France would shake with fury over the ruling, it would be Hénin-Beaumont, a town of 26,000 in France’s northern former industrial heartland, ravaged first by coal mines closing in the 1980s and then by many factories closing, victims of globalization.
The unemployment rate in the area was more than double the national average in 2021, the last census.
Considering this “forgotten territory,” Ms. Pen’s party has made this one of its strongholds. Though she has never lived in the region, Ms. Le Pen chose it as her political heartland, running first in 1998, and continuing to represent the area in regional and European politics. In 2017, she successfully campaigned for a seat in the National Assembly.
During the last presidential election in 2022, she garnered 67 percent of the local vote. In legislative elections last summer, many locally expected her party to win in a landslide, and run the government. Instead, a left-wing coalition and President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling party formed a “dam” by asking candidates in runoffs around the country to form a single anti-National Rally vote.
Still, in Hénin-Beaumont Ms. Le Pen won re-election in the first round by a large margin.
“They want to eliminate her from the presidency,” said Karen Huret, 57, arriving Tuesday morning to the market to pick up supplies for her elderly mother. “Last time, they used the dam. This is another tactic.”
For many locals, fidelity to Ms. Le Pen’s party is less ideological than an appreciating her party’s retail politics. They cite the new aquatic center in town and the Christmas market. They feel respected by her and the party.
“She is nice. I took photos of her with my kids at the flea market,” said Ms. Huret, a stay-at-home mom. “I don’t believe she is racist. I’m from the inner-city — I believe everyone should be respected.”
The town had a history of corruption preceding Ms. Le Pen’s conviction. The Socialist former mayor, Gérard Dalongeville, was convicted of stealing 4 million euros with phony invoices and sentenced to four years in prison. For some locals, the latest court ruling deepened their cynicism.
“We’ve had Communists, Socialists, the National Rally — they are all the same,” said Mohamed Oussedrat, 60, enjoying a diabolo menthe at a bar, after his shift working maintenance at a hospital.
Marine Tondelier, an elected councilor in Hénin-Beaumont and leader of the national Green Party took to the news channels to point out that the National Rally calls for strict law enforcement and tougher sentences — except, it seemed, when it came to its own members.
“It shows you their hypocrisy,” she said. “I’ve been hearing about ‘systems put in place against them.’ The only system put in place is the one they set to divert public funds.”
She was not the only one in town who thought that way — though perhaps in a more quiet tone.
“She denigrates foreigners all the time. She says they don’t respect the law,” said Karim Zoui, 29. “Well, there you go. She doesn’t respect the law.”
Then he used a term often applied by the far right to migrants — voyou, or thug.
“If they are thugs,” he said, “they should pay.”
Catherine Porter is an international reporter for The Times, covering France. She is based in Paris. More about Catherine Porter
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