“The city will be clean and calm with me.” The action movie music comes in and Rachida Dati, Minister of Culture, a controversial figure on the right, is observed Gaullist Frenchwoman, dressed in a yellow raincoat, like the one worn by the garbage collectors in Paris. Dati, a former minister of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, now buried in corruption cases and on provisional release after his time in prison, helps empty a bucket and jumps to get on one of the backs of the garbage truck, which sets off to travel through the Parisian night. The politician, involved in countless controversies, including that of the historic robbery of the Louvre, wants to be mayor of the city. And, according to the polls, he has a great chance of achieving it after next spring’s elections.
The garbage sequence, very similar to the one that President Donald Trump also represented in the last United States presidential campaign, is pure electoral symbology. But also a personal story.
🔴 INFO – #Policy : A sequence circulating on social networks shows Rachida #Data picking up trash in the street. The scene provokes many reactions, between irony, support and questions about the real context. pic.twitter.com/h6eiPf9uTE
— FranceNews24 (@FranceNews24) November 24, 2025
Rachida Dati, who grew up in a working-class family, has been haunted by a reputation for snobhaughty. At that time she appeared on the cover of a celebrity magazine on the arm of Dior designer John Galliano. She posed with dresses from that brand on the front page of Paris Match. Like her mentor, who attributes the trail of convictions for corruption and illicit financing of her campaigns to an orchestrated attack by the judiciary, when she feels aggrieved, she attacks. The garbage truck he got on, however, was humility, work. “Efficiency,” she says. And it transported her to her working-class origins, which she tired of seeing published a long time ago.
The garbage containers also underline his promise of law and order for the city of Paris. “If I am mayor, the city will always be clean,” she promises the truck driver, delighted to share regrets and the cabin with her. If she won, she would be the first person of Arab and Muslim origin—and a right-wing woman—to lead the capital of a France tormented by identity conflicts and social fractures. Although some issues now call into question the legitimacy of their announcements.
Dati will be tried for passive corruption and influence peddling in the Renault case. Justice suspects that he received 900,000 euros between 2010 and 2012 for fictitious advice, that is, in exchange for taking sides in favor of the manufacturer in the European Parliament. Dati also failed to declare to the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life – the body to which members of the Government must present their accounts – his collection of jewelry pieces valued at 420,000 euros.
None of this, however, is a problem for continuing in the Executive – it is one of the most resilient positions after staying with Gabriel Attal, François Bayrou and Sébastien Lecornu – or for aspiring to be mayor of the capital of France. “She is very tough, these types of cases give her strength. She believes that it is a test that she must overcome. The more they attack her, the more convinced she is,” says a person who knows her well from her time as Minister of Justice.
Dati, mother of one daughter, is not afraid of anyone. “I will turn your dog into a kebab,” he wrote in an SMS to former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, in a moment of confrontation between the two, regarding Volta, his friendly pet. The candidate for mayor of Paris grew up far from the capital, on the outskirts of the provincial city of Chalon-sur-Saône (Burgundy). She was the second of 12 children of Mbark and Fatim-Zohra, a Moroccan bricklayer and an illiterate Algerian woman. Their parents struggled to make ends meet, sewing their children’s clothes from curtain fabric that, Rachida complained, made them look like members of a cult.
At home, an apartment in a social housing block, they listened to Charles Aznavour and Um Kalthum. The first project Mbark worked on in France was a Catholic school. She approached the principal and asked that her two eldest daughters, Malika and Rachida, be admitted. The mother superior was surprised, but accepted, warning that she would have to pay the modest fees. It worked.
Dati, and this remains something the French appreciate, embodies the collective aspirational dream. “I will be the mayor of the results,” she repeats in the garbage video. But also the old promise of equality of the Republic. From the age of 16, he accumulated an endless list of part-time jobs to help his family: he sold Avon products door to door, sold sausages, worked at a gas station and at a supermarket checkout. When he went to study economics at the university of Dijon, he worked night shifts as an assistant in a hospital, sending money home. School, hard work, make all French people equal. The social elevator. That will help her in the next municipal elections. Although almost no one believes in that idea anymore.
The Minister of Culture, omnipresent in the media, is also the mayor since 2008 of the wealthy VII arrondissement of Paris. Her rivals in the electoral race, for which she continues to be the favorite with 28% support – she has fallen in recent weeks – know that it will be difficult to beat her. “She has two advantages and many disadvantages for that career. She has been on the French political scene for a long time, she has a lot of notoriety. She is well placed in the media. And, furthermore, she is a fighter, with humble roots that underline the merit of her rise,” says a deputy who knows her well. “The negative part, however, is that it divides a lot. There is hostility towards her. She is very well known, but she polarizes the debate.” In the latest poll Doxa appeared as the second political personality, after Jean-Luc Mélenchon (leader of La Francia Insumisa), to generate this rejection.
Following the advice of her new mentor, Simone Veil, the revered Holocaust survivor and former minister, she trained as a magistrate and served briefly, until, after becoming Sarkozy’s adviser at the Interior Ministry, he proposed her as justice minister. Always, however, she was accompanied by controversies, as has also happened during her time in the Ministry of Culture.
Frédéric Martel, writer and director of the program Soft Power of France Culture, believes that his figure arouses unanimous rejection in the cultural sphere. “Almost everyone considers her incompetent, uneducated and vulgar. She has done nothing for Culture. It is true that she has managed the ministry, she has maintained the budget and since it is highly mediatized, she has assumed the role. And that is good. But she does not know what cultural policy is. She has a destructive idea of grassroots culture. She wants to bring it closer to the popular classes, to the neighborhoods, to the towns. But she does not provide the means, because that must be done by the associations that she does not help. “It works erratically, it makes no sense. And for Radio France it is a disaster, because it tries to reform something it completely ignores.”
Dati, in reality, has been a minister against culture. Or against their representatives. “She is not afraid of the artists. They are the ones who are afraid of her. They say little, to protect a subsidy in difficult times, but privately they confide their contempt or their aversion,” explained journalist Michel Guerrin in The World. “The notebook of nicknames is well stocked: incompetent, demagogue, populist, liar, in the process of trumpization”the journalist insisted.
The fight is permanent. Also against the public audiovisual sector, for which he has designed a highly criticized reform. The Dati law proposes creating a single holding company, France Médias, to group France Télévisions, Radio France and the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA) under a single management, with the argument of reinforcing audiovisual sovereignty and coordination between public media compared to private platforms. But the opposition, and the unions, fear that the objective is to liquidate ideological diversity and facilitate its control.
Dati, despite having tried to deflect the shot, has come out sloppy after the Louvre scandal. One of his rivals in the mayoral race, the socialist Emmanuel Grégoire, sees it this way. “The Tuesday after the robbery she said that there were no problems or failures. And that was not true, as has been demonstrated. Then she tried to correct the shot. She spends her time as an elected member of the municipal opposition giving security lessons to the left, and that is a problem with what has happened at the Louvre, which depends on her. Although she later wanted to blame the insecurity in the city, the failures were in her area, in the museum. And that dismantles her authority.”
His time at the Ministry of Culture will not leave a great memory.