After the right-wing defeat in the 1997 legislative election, the UDF faced a major crisis. While the centrist components had merged into FD led by François Bayrou, the liberal-conservatives tried to overcome the "chiraquiens"/"balladuriens" fracture. The PR was joined by some politicians from the PPDF, such as Jean Pierre Raffarin (a former Republican) and was renamed Liberal Democracy (DL). DL soon began to reassert its autonomy within the alliance and finally broke ranks with the UDF in 1998. The event which triggered the split was the election of UDF politicians at the head of four regional councils, who won with support from the National Front. DL refused to condemn the arrangement, whilst the centrists did.