Imagine you’re about to go vote in an election. You provide proper identification, receive a paper ballot and head to the nearest voting screen. As you look up and down the ballot, you see two names that are immediately recognizable but spelled a bit differently. You give your head a massive shake and wonder if you’re dreaming.

That’s what could have happened if you had casted a vote for a political candidate named either “Hittler” or “Zielinski.”

No, I’m not kidding about this. A recent election received significant international coverage solely due to some eye-raising last names. Let’s examine this further.

Our story begins in Arcis-sur-Aube, a small French town with a population of 2,785. It has a bit of historical significance, too. “In 1814, Napoleon fought a battle at Arcis-sur-Aube against the invading Austrian, Prussian and Russian armies,” according to BBC News, “and two years later German immigrants invited by the Russian government named their settlement Artsyz, after the battle.”

Arcis-sur-Aube recently held its municipal elections. The town’s high-profile mayoral race featured centre-right incumbent Charles Hittler facing off against customs officer Antoine Renault-Zielinski of the far-right Patriot movement and non-partisan local councillor Annie Soucat.

Hittler led the first round of voting on March 15 with 411 votes and 37.81 percent, followed by Soucat (350 votes, 32.2 percent) and Renault-Zielinski (326 votes, 29.99 percent). Since no candidate was above the 50 percent threshold, a second round (or runoff) was held on March 22. Hittler was re-elected mayor with 455 votes and 40.59 percent, which earned his party list 17 out of the 23 available seats. He was followed by Soucat (353 votes, 31.49 percent, 3 seats) and Renault-Zielinski (313 votes, 27.92 percent, 3 seats).

That’s all well and good. What caught everyone’s attention was the surname of the winner and third-place finisher.

“It has gone completely crazy,” Hittler told Hugh Schofield, BBC’s Paris correspondent. “All my life I’ve had the occasional joke made about my name. Sometimes people drew moustaches on my election posters. It was never a big deal. But now it’s out of control. I’ve seen online articles saying ’37% of the people of Arcis are Hitlerites!’ My wife is in tears.”

Why did the incumbent mayor, who used to be the head of a French laboratory, go through life with this last name? “My family comes from northern Alsace, and my father was a shepherd. In the war he was taken to Germany in their forced labour programme,” he said. “After he came back he met my mother. Everyone said, ‘You’ve got to change your name.’ This was 1949. The war was a recent memory. But it was a huge administrative headache and it would have cost a lot of money, so they didn’t.”

Schofield wrote there are “only a few of his tribe left in France.” His cousins all had girls. One of his sons pronounces the surname “Hit-lay.” As for the mayor, he has a different perspective. “Once you are known, the name begins not to matter. People look at the person behind the name. To my familiars, I was just ‘Monsieur Charles.’ So I decided to keep it.”

The 75-year-old Hittler made a good point about his last name to the Daily Telegraph. To wit, “my whole family, all my ancestors, they’re all called Hittler. Some of them died for France. Why should we change our name? Because there was some idiot who was called Adolf?” Moreover, he made this astute comment to France’s BFMTV, “If I kept my name, it’s to show that not everyone with that name is an idiot! It all depends on what you do with it.”

As for Renault-Zielinski, the second part of his last name is Polish and comes through the maternal line. A recent arrival to Arcis-sur-Aube, his backstory is equally interesting.

“People are often asking me if I am related to Zelensky – to which I have to answer no, pointing out that the Polish name ends in an ‘i’ and the Ukrainian in a ‘y,’” according to his BFMTV interview. “On Sunday I began seeing messages about our names circulating on X and I thought it was just a silly joke. But gradually I realised that everyone is talking about us!”

Renault-Zielinski acknowledged he can “see why people find it amusing.” Nevertheless, “it doesn’t make me laugh, but it doesn’t bother me either. It would be better if people were talking about Arcis for other reasons, but at least we’re on the map.”

Mayor Hittler sees things differently with respect to media attention. “If people were talking about the town and our policies, that would be one thing. But all they’re interested in is our names.”

What an odd and amusing political story. Imagine if Canadian voters were ever faced with the same situation as the little French town of Arcis-sur-Aube. Who knows? It could have led to an unexpected election between candidates named “Karney” and “Poly’eve” – with a dark horse candidate, “Trumped,” also in the mix.

Michael Taube, a longtime newspaper columnist and political commentator, was a speechwriter for former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper.

The post When Hittler ran against Zielinski in France appeared first on Loonie Politics.

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