When he left the presidency of the Pays de la Loire regional council in December 2015, Jacques Auxiette turned to his relatives, smirking, to slip in his favorite little phrase: “ I think we weren’t entirely useless. “ The former socialist mayor of La Roche-sur-Yon died on Friday December 10. He was 81 years old.
The man embodied a certain golden age, that of the great conquests of the West. In particular those of 1977, when Rennes (Edmond Hervé), Angers (Jean Monnier) and La Roche-sur-Yon fell into the hands of the union of the left, which then brought together communists, socialists and environmentalists.
Born December 3, 1940 in Montlevicq (Indre), son of a peacekeeper, Jacques Auxiette spent his youth in Montluçon (Allier) and studied at Clermont-Ferrand, before being appointed professor of mathematics at La Roche- sur-Yon in 1964. He will become censor, then principal, at the polyvalent high school (which he will later rename Pierre-Mendès-France). In 1973, after joining the Unef student union and campaigning for the Unified Socialist Party, he joined the Socialist Party.
His victory at La Roche-sur-Yon, four years later, is a revelation. He was constantly re-elected there until 2004, despite the recurring difficulties of the left in Vendée, known to be very conservative. He will scrape there with Philippe de Villiers before rubbing shoulders, much later, with Bruno Retailleau.
In 2004, it was François Fillon that he agreed to face in the regional elections, while the left was given the loser. Faced with the elected representative of Sablé-sur-Sarthe, who chaired the community from 1998 to 2004, the Vendéen nevertheless won with 52.35% of the vote.
The national education retiree imposes free textbooks in high schools and the construction of a public establishment in the Mauges, Beaupréau (Maine-et-Loire). An emblematic dossier on lands dominated by Catholic education. The first stone was laid there in 1981. It also stood out at the time of the 2008 financial crisis by launching a large bond loan to the public to support SMEs in the region.
Easily re-elected in 2010, Jacques Auxiette will have faced some storms, scrapped against the SNCF for the maintenance of the railway lines and obtained, with associations for the defense of the environment, that justice recognize the “ecological damage” and the responsibility of the Total group , ten years after the sinking of the Erika (December 12, 1999).
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