On February 16, more than 1,500 people crowded into the town hall of Montreuil, a working-class but rapidly gentrifying suburb in eastern Paris. Wearing red surgical masks and carrying flags and banners, they were there to celebrate “le défi des jours heureux,” literally meaning “the challenge of happy days.” Hearkening back to the National Resistance Council program that helped orient France’s reconstruction at the end of World War II, this promise of “happy days” provides the campaign slogan of French Communist Party (Parti communiste français, PCF) candidate Fabien Roussel, who has in recent weeks emerged as a dark horse for April’s presidential elections.

Speaking before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Roussel started his speech with a call for a peaceful solution to the crisis in Eastern Europe. But his focus was less on international politics than the hot-button domestic issues — deindustrialization, purchasing power, inequality — that he has made his calling card since officially declaring his run for the presidency in May 2021.

“Here [in the Paris suburbs], successive administrations of both Left and Right have left inequalities to fester,” he told the crowd of mostly party loyalists and activists. “This class inequality is unacceptable. You are the real heroes of the republic, and you are essential [workers].”