National Front leader Marine Le Pen only reached 4th position with 11 percent, she is widely tipped to make it to the second round run-off against Emmanuel Macron.
Centrist Emmanuel Macron's lead in France's presidential election has narrowed though he is still on course to win, two polls casting light on voter intentions following a televised debate between candidates showed.
"Marine Le Pen is a French nationalist, and if she wins, France will not be the kind of ally that it has been to the United States for so many years since the foundation of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation".
"I want to recover the optimism of the French", said 39-year-old centrist Emmanuel Macron, now tipped to win in May, asserting that entrepreneurs and businesses are job creators.
Macron replied by saying that his rival was repeating "the same lies" uttered by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front, for 40 years.
Rachline, 29, a rising young star in Le Pen's anti-immigration and anti-euro party, had been on the payroll of the Lille-based regional council while at the same time being an elected councillor in a region in Provence, about 1,000 km (625 miles) to the south, it said.
The poll - which surveyed 14,300 people between March 31 and April 2 - said Macron would beat Le Pen in the May second-round vote by 61 percent to 39 percent.
One of them, Francois Asselineau, said he was the "only true candidate of Frexit", the word coined to refer to a French EU exit.
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In a marathon debate, which almost lasted four hours, the candidates discussed everything from corruption to leaving the European Union to job creation and to modernisation of the French economy.
Ms Le Pen, leader of the National Front (FN) party, promised to restore control of France's borders and scrap the euro, or else hold a referendum on European Union membership.
"There's so much liquidity in the world that they are not going to pull their chips out of France, above all when France will once again be back on the road to economic growth", she told French Sud Radio and TV channel Public Senat.
The six other candidates could suck enough votes away from top contenders to sway the race.
Both Mr Fillon and Ms Le Pen deny wrongdoing and say they will be able to demonstrate their innocence in a court of law.
Despite their differences on a few issues, Marion has continued to campaign for her aunt's presidential bid and looks to bring her traditionalist Catholic supporters to the polls in April.
But Le Pen has her own problems. Unlike Macron, Le Pen enjoys solid support unlikely to be diminished by the debate or by new campaign scandals.
"There will be a referendum in any case", she said, adding that, assuming she was president, she would step down if her proposal in that popular vote was not supported.
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