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Jean Royer (31 October 1920 – 25 March 2011) was a French Catholic conservative politician who was a minister and mayor of Tours.
In the 1960s he led an expansion of the city by annexing the cities of Sainte-Radegonde-en-Touraine and de Saint-Symphorien in order to increase the surface area available for more constructions. His main accomplishment was the construction, in an area of four kilometres along the river Cher, of housing and parks. This area included an artificial lake. He sparked controversy by supporting the construction of the A10 along Tours.
Described within his own party as an autocracy, Royer led a staunch policy vis-a-vis of social evolutions in the 1960s and 1970s. He outlawed pornographic films and brothels. In 1968 he expelled from the city Michel-Georges Micberth, who had founded a psychological and pathological research center.
He stood as the candidate of moral order and polled up to 7%. However, his candidacy became a fiasco. He multiplied gaffes: he resigned from the government, unlike Valéry Giscard d'Estaing; he installed his headquarters in Tours, not in Paris; and he refused to take the plane during the campaign. His meetings were also a fiasco. For example, in Toulouse, the majority of his listeners were young students who laughed at him and yelled obscene sexual slogans. A young woman even went to the extent of undressing in front of the camera.
He won 810,540 votes, or 3.17%. Most of his votes came from Indre-et-Loire, where he broke 30%.
In the 1995 local elections, he was defeated in his bid for re-election in a three-way race with the PS and RPR. The PS Jean Germain was elected.
In the 2002 presidential election he supported the candidacy of Jean-Pierre Chevènement, before retiring from politics. In 2004 and 2007 he was hospitalized for "serious" health issues. In October 2013 a statue of Royer was erected in Place de la Liberte, Tours. The cost of 44,000 Euros being raised by public subscription.
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