PT attracts newcomers and plans to elect more mayors under Lula – 09/30/2024 – Power

Four years after facing its worst performance in a municipal election this century, the PT plans to return to growth at the polls after President Lula’s return to Planalto.

To achieve its objective, the party strengthened its base of candidates for mayor and councilor, attracting to its ranks candidates who ran for other parties in the last two elections, including politicians from the center.

Survey of Sheet points out that 19% of PT mayoral candidates in this year’s elections joined the party recently and have no political trajectory within the party.

In total, the party launched 1,392 candidates for mayor, of which at least 263 were affiliated with other parties in the previous election. Among them are two candidates in the capitals: Evandro Leitão, in Fortaleza, from the PDT, and Marcelo Ramos, in Manaus, who was affiliated with the PSD.

The majority of new members running for mayor came from PP –39 in total. The party is one of the main members of the centrão in Congress and was part of Jair Bolsonaro’s ticket in the 2022 presidential elections.

Ciro Gomes’ PDT comes next, being the party of origin of 34 of the current PT mayoral candidates, followed by PSD with 26 and MDB with 21. Another 21 were part of the PL in 2020, a party to which former president Bolsonaro joined joined in 2021.

“The majority are mayors from the Northeast, where these parties marched with Lula. They are people who have a political relationship with us”, says senator Humberto Costa (PT-PE), coordinator of the PT’s Electoral Tactics Group.

The advance of new PT affiliations was driven by the states of Piauí, Bahia and Ceará, all commanded by PT governors. But there were also new affiliations of mayoral candidates in 21 other states, with emphasis on Minas Gerais and Paraná.

In Piauí, a state governed by PT member Rafael Fonteles, the party is competing with 135 candidates for mayor, of which 47 contested the previous election for other parties.

The majority of candidates – nine in total – were affiliated in 2020 with the PP, a party led in the state by senator Ciro Nogueira and which in recent years has become the main opponent of the PT members.

Ciro Nogueira was an ally of the then governor Wellington Dias (PT), now Minister of Social Development, but both broke up in 2020 after the senator approached Bolsonaro — the following year, he would take over the Civil House, becoming one of the then president’s strong men. .

In Bahia, there are 156 PT mayoral candidates, 38 of which are newly affiliated to the party. Nine of them came from the PP, which broke with the PT in the 2022 elections to support the then candidate for governor ACM Neto (União Brasil), defeated at the polls by Jerônimo Rodrigues (PT).

Among the new members are former allies of Bolsonaro, such as the candidate for mayor of Barreiras, Carlos Tito (PT). He supported the former president when he was a federal deputy for Avante. He was unable to be re-elected in 2022 and migrated to the PT to try to be mayor of the largest city in western Bahia.

In Lauro de Freitas, in Greater Salvador, the PT competes with Antônio Rosalvo, who was affiliated with the PP. In 2015, he participated in protests for the impeachment of then president Dilma Rousseff.

In the cities of Terra Nova, Planaltino, Presidente Jânio Quadros and Rio do Pires, PT candidates were affiliated with the PL. In the city of Itacaré, candidate Edson Mendes (PT), known as Nego de Saronga, ran for mayor in 2020 for DEM, currently União Brasil, the main opponent of PT in the state.

President of the PT in Bahia, Éden Valadares states that the party established objective criteria for joining mayors: they should be names that supported Lula and Jerônimo Rodrigues in 2022, that had the approval of the municipal directory and that committed to supporting candidates for PT deputy in 2026.

There were no criteria, however, for joining candidates who did not have mandates or who were councilors in their cities. In these cases, affiliations were established at the municipal level.

With 32 mayors elected in Bahia in 2020, the PT is expected to grow in this election: “There is no cabalistic number, but the tendency is to increase the number of elected mayors, perhaps even doubling.”

In Ceará, the PT attracted cadres from the PDT – the two parties were allies in the state, but broke up in 2022. The split deepened throughout 2023 with the disagreement between the brothers Ciro and Cid Gomes, who represented the government wing of the PDT and left the party this year.

The majority of PDT mayoral candidates migrated to PSB, Cid’s new party, but 13 of them went to PT, including state deputy Evandro Leitão, candidate for mayor in the capital.

In an interview with Sheet last week, Evandro minimized the change: “That’s irrelevant. The voter will not evaluate you because you joined now or if you joined six months, a year ago, five, ten, in a party A, B or C. The important thing is their flags, their struggles, their life story”, he said.

On the eve of the elections, the PT has redoubled its work to boost its candidates, especially in large and medium-sized cities.

Four years ago, the PT left the polls with 183 mayors, its worst performance since 1996, but it grew through party migration after Lula’s election, reaching 286 mayors. The party did not define a goal, but wants “a much better result” compared to 2020, says Humberto Costa.

In total, the PT launched 29,912 candidates for mayor, deputy and councilor in these elections, of which 4,594 contested the 2020 elections in other parties. Those who only contested the 2022 election and migrated to the party were 64, totaling 4,658 in both years. Overall, the majority of new members came from PSD (470), PP (468) and PDT (458).