The name is absent

ing to construct and to strengthen local and departmental party organiza-
tions.

In 1967 and 1968 the party’s top administrative structure was twice
reformed. In May, 1967, Baumel stepped down in favor of a collegial five-
man national secretariat. Georges Pompidou and Roger Frey became the
actual though unofficial party leaders. When the new UD-V^c statutes re-
stored the single party executive, the Executive Committee chose Robert
Poujade, one of the five reigning national secretaries, to be General Sec-
retary. Poujade in turn kept on three of his four colleagues in the national
secretariat: Jean Charbonnel as an assistant secretary-general in charge of
economic and social questions and of relations with associated organiza-
tions; René Tomasini as Secretary for the National Congress and the Na-
tional Council; and Jean Taittinger as Treasurer.¹¹² Poujade completed his
team with Jean Valleix, in charge of internal party organization, and Michel
Herson, whose specialty was to be the preparation of elections.

The task of organization is far from complete, however. As Jacques
Baumel admitted after the failure of the UNR assault on the local positions
of the older parties in the municipal elections of March, 1965, in many
areas ". . . the UNR-UDT is practically nonexistent at the base.””'¹ After
those elections, with the conviction that time is on the side of the Gaul-
lists, Minister of Interior Roger Frey commented (not altogether accurately)
that at the beginning of the Third Republic, “it took the Republicans fifty
years” to gain control of the communes of France.”*

Despite its centralized character, the UDR cannot always be assured of
controlling its locally elected officeholders. To be sure, the presence of
de Gaulle at the head of the state lends unity to the party, yet, as we have
seen, a diversity of views contend on economic and social policies. Were
de Gaulle no longer on the scene, those UDR deputies with strong local
support would have little need for the party in order to win reelection. For
example, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, Mayor of Bordeaux and President of
the National Assembly, is considerably stronger in the department of Gir-
onde than is his party. Chaban-Delmas retains a secure political base in
Bordeaux, even though the UNR’s share of the ten-seat Gironde delegation
has dropped from seven in 1958 to five in 1962 to three in 1967.^,*^r' At the
commune level as well as at the legislative district level, Gaullist electoral
success in Gironde has come in large part through focusing on personal-
ities rather than on parties.¹"¹ Elsewhere, in the district of Sarthe, the intelli-
gent and effective deputy-mayor of Sablé, Joël LeTheule (now a government
minister), was reelected on the first ballot in November, 1962, in March,
1967, and again in June, 1968, even though in 1965 the UD-V^e could boast
no more than nine dues-paying members in his entire district.¹¹⁷ So long as
single-member districts are retained, and so long as men like Chaban-Del-

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