Defeat of the PSDB in SP becomes an argument for link with Bolsonaro – 03/04/2024 – Power

The defeat of former governor Rodrigo Garcia (PSDB) in his bid for re-election in 2022 influenced the decision of mayor Ricardo Nunes (MDB) to join Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in the São Paulo municipal election, despite supporters raising doubts on the cost-benefit of the former president’s support.

The former Tucano governor himself, who has been advising the mayor behind the scenes, mentioned his experience to Nunes to argue that national polarization has swallowed electoral disputes as a whole and that there is no room for a candidate not to ally himself even with the president. Lula (PT) nor with Bolsonaro, as he tried to do and it didn’t work.

Nunes’ main opponent in the dispute, Guilherme Boulos (PSOL) has the support of Lula and seeks to nationalize the election.

To avoid repeating Rodrigo’s failure, who was left out of the second round between Bolsonaro’s Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans) and PT’s Fernando Haddad, Nunes opted for pragmatism and sought from the beginning to tie Bolsonaro’s support and prevent the former president to launch a name more to the right to run.

In this endeavor, the mayor had the support of the PL president, Valdemar Costa Neto, and Bolsonaro’s lawyer and former secretary, Fabio Wajngarten, who worked to convince the former president to support Nunes and not launch deputy Ricardo Salles (PL -SP), which was left without a party to compete.

However, in this case the calculation was different, equally pragmatic. If for Rodrigo the lesson was that, alone, the center would not win, for Bolsonaro’s allies the projection was that the Bolsonaro right, alone, would not surpass Boulos in the city where Lula had more votes than the former president in 2022 ( 53.5% to 46.5%).

That year, before Bolsonaro launched Tarcísio, they approached Rodrigo proposing that the toucan represent the then president’s platform in São Paulo and that the current governor be the Senate candidate on the ticket.

Rodrigo, however, preferred not to align himself with Bolsonarism — he ended up doing so after the defeat in the first round, when he declared support for Bolsonaro and Tarcísio, and received the then president at the Palácio dos Bandeirantes.

The memory of Rodrigo’s campaign is frequently evoked by Nunes’ allies, mainly MDB and PSDB politicians, to justify the alliance with Bolsonaro, despite the series of reservations that these leaders have regarding the former president, unelectable and surrounded by investigation investigating an attempted coup d’état involving Saudi Arabian jewelry.

In a way, Rodrigo’s campaign in 2022 became a ghost that haunts Nunes’ pre-campaign. Even considering Bolsonaro’s high rejection, the mayor’s assistants say that we cannot run the risk of repeating what happened with the former governor, who was run over by the former president’s candidate in a move that was not foreseen.

This puts Nunes in a delicate situation, with the obligation to nod to the Bolsonarists, but trying to get rid of the rejection of this field in the capital of São Paulo.

Organizers of Nunes’ pre-campaign claim that the electoral strength of Bolsonarism cannot be ignored — Lula’s victory in 2022, after all, was the closest since redemocratization (50.9% to 49.1%).

Without a Bolsonarist candidate in the running, Nunes would be able to unify the anti-Boulos votes and practically guarantee her place in the second round. In addition to the mayor and the psolist, who are fighting at the top of the polls, Tabata Amaral (PSB) is on the outside in third place.

Politicians around Rodrigo claim that he was convinced that he would be re-elected in 2022. In fact, there were a series of elements in his favor, such as control of the state machinery, the support of almost all mayors, the coalition with the largest number of parties and a management with deliveries — same conditions as Nunes today.

Among the mottos of Rodrigo’s campaign, which extolled his experience in public management, was “neither right nor left”, a bet that, seen with today’s eyes, is criticized by part of the toucans.

Rodrigo had 18.4% of the votes, compared to 35.7% for Haddad and 42.3% for Tarcísio.

“People don’t just want well-evaluated governments, they want leaders with clear opinions and positions”, says Wilson Pedroso (PSDB), who coordinated Rodrigo’s campaign and supports Nunes’ re-election.

Evicted from the palace, Rodrigo spent most of 2023 in the United States, where he studied English and business. Back in Brazil, he left politics on the back burner and opened a tax law firm. Recently, he has been recovering his joints and has been helping Nunes. Allies believe that he wants to run for the São Paulo government in 2026.

The former governor was, for example, among the authorities on stage at the inauguration ceremony of Aldo Rebelo and José Renato Nalini at city hall, an event on the 19th that gave political weight to Nunes’ pre-campaign.

While adopting a strategy opposite to that of Rodrigo in relation to Bolsonaro’s support, Nunes repeats the toucan on the other hand when defending the center position, marking that the MDB wants to impress on the mayor despite the link with Bolsonaroism — it was this contradiction that the former governor sought to avoid it in 2022.

In an attempt to get the best of both worlds, Nunes’ pre-campaign claims to represent a broad front, with supporters from the center-left to the extreme right, which dilutes Bolsonaro’s weight.

“We can learn lessons from every election, but the election for governor is a totally different election from the election for mayor, because the electorate is different. Still, it is clear that we realize that the center alone does not win elections. So, we need to build politically a winning composition”, says the municipal president of the MDB and secretary of the Nunes administration, Enrico Misasi.

The inauguration of Aldo and Nalini, which was attended by former president Michel Temer (MDB) and other emedebista leaders, had this tone, in a kind of counterpoint to Nunes’ association with Bolsonarism, which was evident with the mayor’s participation at Bolsonaro’s event on Avenida Paulista.

The emedebista did not speak at the demonstration on the 25th and remained discreet in the sound truck. At the city hall event the previous week, Nunes defended vaccines and said he was not worried “about ideological issues” or about going “left or right”.