PARIS--France's presidential race sank deeper into smear and sleaze on Tuesday after centrist Emmanuel Macron was forced to deny an extramarital affair and conservative Francois Fillon pressed on with efforts to salvage his reputation.
A slump in support for Fillon after accusations that he used taxpayers' money to pay his wife for work she may not have done has propelled Macron into the top spot in opinion polls. Late on Monday, Macron, a centrist former economy minister and ex-banker sought to kill rumours of a gay relationship outside his marriage to Brigitte Trogneux and push his campaign on.
"If you're told I lead a double life with Mr Gallet, it's because my hologram has escaped," Macron told supporters, referring to Radio France chief executive Mathieu Gallet.
A spokeswoman said the comments were "a clear denial of the rumours about his private life."
It is Fillon's campaign, though, that has been hit by scandal. On Monday he apologised for what he said was an error of judgment regarding the employment of family members, but said his wife's work had been genuine and legal and vowed to fight on.
In a voter survey published on Tuesday, 65 percent of respondents polled after he made his comments said they still wanted him replaced as candidate of the centre-right, a figure that will do little to soothe anxieties within his party, The Republicans.
Le Canard Enchaine, the satirical weekly that broke the scandal involving Fillon's wife, Penelope, made new allegations on Tuesday. In addition to the roughly one million euros paid to her and two of the couple's adult children, the newspaper said she had also received severance pay totalling 45,000 euros ($48,105) over the years.
Fillon, who said on Monday he was a victim of "media lynching", hit back immediately with a statement in which he contested the figures given by the weekly. "Not only does le Canard Enchaine try to cast doubt, wrongly, over the calculation of the net average salary of my wife but it commits numerous errors in analysing information on the pay slips," he said.
"Only a desire to cause harm can explain this report which is full of lies," he said.
Heaping more pressure on the centre-right party, it emerged that a magistrate had ordered ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy to stand trial over election financing irregularities - a reminder of the party's past brushes with financial scandal. French politics has a long history of financial and personal scandals, and the country's media has become less shy about reporting the private life of public figures.
Photographs of current president Francois Hollande arriving outside the flat of actress Julie Gayet on the back of a motor scooter were splashed across front pages while he was officially still in another relationship. Sarkozy's divorce in 2007 just months after his election and subsequent marriage to singer and model Carla Bruni were also widely covered.
And it was a sex-scandal that destroyed the presidential hopes of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss Kahn and gave Hollande his chance for the 2012 presidency.
Financial scandals have, however, always been fair game in the French media. One famous case during Sarkozy's presidency was the Elf oil company graft affair involving tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks for the leaders of African countries where the company was investing.
Former president Jacques Chirac was given a two year suspended prison sentence for misusing public funds in 2011, and Alain Juppe, whom Fillon beat to the conservative ticket last year, was convicted for a similar offence dating back to 2004.
