He failed to show up this week for a signing that would have clinched the sale of the town's Treasury building for conversion to a mosque. The deal had won council approval before his election and was secured with a hefty deposit.
Abdelaziz El Jaouhari, president of the Association of Muslims of Mantes-Sud which is buying the property, called Nauth's absence "Islamophobic and racist." He said that since Nauth's election victory, hate mail and scraps of pork - considered ritually unclean in Islam - have been shoved into the mailbox of the Muslim community's prayer room.
On Friday, as around 100 Muslims protested in front of the town hall, Nauth asked them to abandon the mosque project.
The Associated Press made several phone calls to the town hall over two days seeking an interview, but Nauth did not respond. He told the daily Liberation newspaper that he opposes the mosque plans because his voters want it blocked.
El Jaouhari said his association will sue the mayor and force the city to honor the deal.
The confrontation may risk longer-term consequences for the National Front, whose president, Le Pen, has worked hard to undo the party's racist, xenophobic image gained under the leadership of her father, party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen. She has had a measure of success in erasing that stigma and boosted support in traditionally Socialist bastions.
The National Front wants to avoid repeating its disastrous experience of the 1990s, when it suffered a voter backlash after four National Front-controlled towns were seen to attack cultural activities in pursuit of party ideology. They cut funding to minority groups, banned books deemed too "cosmopolitan" from libraries, and banned rap performances in favor of traditional folk music. They also floated the idea of paying bonuses to French couples for having children.
Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti said she is monitoring whether cultural activities are suppressed again in far-right towns. Some artists, fearing a hostile audience, already have canceled summer performances in Beaucaire.
For Martine Tacconi, who works for a Beaucaire employment firm, it's no surprise that the far right was elected.
"We have a very fragile population, people without diplomas, without qualifications ... people at the bottom of the ladder," she said. "I can understand people are in a fed-up phase and I think it (the vote) was to show that."
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Associated Press reporter Masha Macpherson in Paris contributed to this report.
