Evangelicals cite Tarcísio-Michelle ticket without Bolsonaro – 07/04/2023 – Politics

With the favorite Jair Bolsonaro (PL) judged ineligible until 2030 by the TSE (Superior Electoral Court), evangelical allies are beginning to outline alternatives for the next presidential election.

Without making great efforts to defend Bolsonaro on the eve of the trial, the majority votes to maintain friendly relations with President Lula (PT), a possible candidate for re-election. But, at “let’s see time”, they say, there will be no repeat of the partnership seen between several churches and the first PT governments.

A double cited by many includes Governor Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicanos-SP) at the head of the ticket and former First Lady Michelle Bolsonaro, now president of PL Mulher, as his vice-president.

But other arrangements are not ruled out.

The last two elections, with massive support for Bolsonaro, hampered the electoral reversal seen in the past, according to five evangelical leaders with whom the Sheet talked, all of national expression.

If before pastors showed greater physiological ease to adhere to the ruler of the time, whether he was on the right (even better) or on the left (you can overcome it), it is now more complicated to justify an endorsement of progressive names.

Social networks have increased the demand for ideological coherence – it is no longer possible to spend a campaign repeating that such an opponent is an enemy of the evangelical faith and think that your followers will not remember if you show up embracing him in the next election.

And if there’s one thing the internet knows, it’s making noise.

The escalation of culture wars, which polarize society around issues such as abortion and LGBTQIA+ rights, is another obstacle. These moral divisions have become stronger in recent electoral cycles and have infected evangelical temples, with a conservative majority.

There are bonuses and costs, from the perspective of this Christian summit that supported Bolsonarism, in having the former president out of the running.

On the one hand, Bolsonaro has high rejection rates, and everything could get worse if he is arrested because of one of the numerous lawsuits he faces in court.

Officially, they adopt the martyr’s discourse — the idea that ineligibility and eventual arrest would make him wronged in the eyes of the electorate, a dominant sentiment among PT enthusiasts after Lula was jailed.

Behind the scenes, however, they like the picture without the former president on the front line, active only as a powerful electoral campaigner.

But the same leaders point out, with a certain nostalgia, that Bolsonaro was the first to really open the door to the Planalto Palace for them. Other presidents even made a few nods to the segment, PT Lula and Dilma Rousseff included, but nothing comparable to the PL politician.

He is what sociologist of religion Paul Freston called “an ideal hybrid candidate, perhaps the first pan-Christian president, combining the electoral advantages of an evangelical identity but avoiding the disadvantages.”

A self-declared Catholic, who married faithful Michelle under the blessing of Pastor Silas Malafaia, agreed to be baptized in 2016 in the symbolic Jordan River and approached almost all pastors of carat in between.

It is a troupe in control of churches that add up to a few million faithful. Although they do not represent the bulk of Brazilian evangelicals, spread across a scattered network of small temples, they serve as a compass for smaller leaders. This is how Bolsonarism spread through the churches.

Bolsonaro may not be evangelical, but he incorporated the desires of these religious leaders like no one else.

“Its mobilization capacity has not yet suffered any setback”, bets the apostle César Augusto, at the head of the Fonte da Vida Church and frequenter of pastoral entourages in the Planalto Bolsonarista. “He will be the great watershed. Whoever he supports, a good portion of the evangelical people will follow.”

Michelle, “for being evangelical and taking a stand”, has sympathy in the segment, “and that is indisputable”, he says. She can even go along with someone outside of that faith, like the Catholic Tarcísio. But Augusto admits that he does not know whether the governor “will be willing to embrace evangelical principles like Bolsonaro did”.

But Jair’s wife, a neophyte in elections, would not have the political stuff to aspire to the highest majority position in the country right away, say other pastors. Hence the option to put her in the vice.

Another possibility is for Michelle to run for the Senate, and the number two post goes to another woman, the former minister and now senator Tereza Cristina (PP-MS).

In addition, it would be a way of guaranteeing the PP’s TV time in electoral propaganda, says federal deputy Sóstenes Cavalcante (PL-RJ), former president of the evangelical group.

“And it might be interesting to encourage the candidacy of the [governador mineiro Romeu] Zema, Ronaldo Caiado [governador de Goiás] and someone else from the MDB.”

The strategy behind multiple right-wing candidacies: joining forces to beat Lula and increase his rejection, especially in the Northeast.

The obstacle for Tarcísio, according to Sóstenes, would be if he decides not to change the Republicans for the PL. “He will have to be [o número de chapa] 22.”

Bishop Robson Rodovalho, from the Sara Nossa Terra church, agrees that Tarcísio “is in tune with us”. Pastor Silas Malafaia also mentions the governor who served at Esplanada Bolsonarista, as well as Michelle. “Of course it can be, why not her?”

The anointing of the former president, who in an interview with Sheet said to have a “silver bullet” for 2026, will be decisive, in the opinion of these pastors. For the rest, there remains some resignation that the next presidential candidate defended by them in the churches will not be as exciting as the “myth” Bolsonaro.

Only Michelle would be capable of this feat, but her electoral viability for the highest post in the Republic is discredited.

In the words of a pastor, who prefers to keep this speech anonymous: it will be like in the Toucan times of Geraldo Alckmin, Lula’s current deputy, but with a history of quarrels with the PT. Evangelicals even sympathized with his fervent Catholicism. But he was at best an ally, not a friend who put them in the foreground. Life will go on, but Bolsonaro will be missed.