Foreign News: Madame Is Elected

Mme. Renée Lehut is 43, small, blonde and shapely. She lives and is politically active, to put it mildly, in the grimy suburb of La Courneuve (voting strength: about 8,000) in Paris’ “Red Belt.” Ordinarily the town politics of La Courneuve are not big news. But last week Renée Lehut made the transatlantic cables by doing something that millions of women do every day. She changed her mind.

In October, La Courneuve had elected 27 town councillors, 14 of them Communists. One of the 14 was Renée Lehut. Last week the council met in public assembly to choose a mayor. The thing seemed to be in the bag. In a preliminary huddle, the “Cocos” (Commies), holding a majority, had decided to cast a solid vote for one Maurice Léonard.

The 27 ballots were taken out of an urn and counted by the council’s oldest member. Something seemed to stick in his throat. “For Monsieur Léonard—ah—ah—13 votes. For Madame Lehut, 14 votes. Madame Lehut is elected.”

Incredibly, the shapely Renée had defied the party; she had voted for herself. She simply thought she would be a better mayor than Monsieur Leonard. Nine Gaullists, two Socialists and two Popular Republicans had gleefully agreed.

Communists demanded her resignation as mayor, besieged her home, picketed the town hall. One day an agile comrade; threw a right hook past a policeman’s shoulder to Renée’s Grecian nose, altering its shape somewhat. Her sponsors whisked her to a refuge. But she would not resign.

Said a woman Communist: “That woman has dirtied the clean name of Communism. Yes, she is well built—her figure is in better shape than her morality.”