Tarcísio’s project accelerates toucan dismantling in SP – 04/24/2023 – Politics

The reorganization of Brazilian political forces at the beginning of the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and the inevitable local factors accelerated the dismantling of the so-called “Tucanistão”, the stronghold of votes and influence that the PSDB amassed during its 28 years governing São Paulo.

At the center of the changes is the now unofficial political project of Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans), the governor pulled from the sleeve of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) to face the toucanate and petismo Paulistas in 2022.

The governor was elected in the second round with 55% of the votes, a sign of the state’s historic vitality of the center-right, and now the arc of parties around him has generated gravitational force for the party that — even after the debacle of defeat from Rodrigo Garcia to re-election— still saw himself with 40% of the state’s 645 mayors.

Gilberto Kassab’s PSD dominates the process, Tarcísio’s main guarantor in the field of political articulation and his Secretary of Government, followed by the MDB.

In the fluid accounts of party strategists, the PSD should turn the semester with around one hundred mayors, and the MDB, with 80. In the end, they believe, each one could have close to 150, with a probable advantage to the first.

Almost all at the expense of the PSDB, which has already lost 20% to 30% of its municipal representatives.

In 2020, the Kassab acronym had conquered 64 city halls, which were dehydrated by the attraction that the presidential project of the then Tucano governor João Doria exercised before it exploded, in early 2022.

In the words of a toucan leader, “the worst is over”. Perhaps, but not all signs are encouraging for the association. A symbolic name for her, the mayor of São Caetano do Sul, José Auricchio Júnior, has two feet out.

“It’s a melancholy moment, the outcome of a party that has become disconnected from society,” said the mayor, who is in his fourth term in a city in the strategic ABCD, a former stronghold of the PT until now dominated by the PSDB.

Small São Caetano is the city with the best Human Development Index in the country, and has been among the five richest in terms of GDP per capita for years.

He joined the tucanate in 2015, coming from the PTB, and is in his fourth term. “The PSD is the party of the future of the centre, of the centre-right”, he said, who nevertheless said that he would only make his final decision later on, closer to October.

Auricchio points to national factors as prevalent. “The PSD has structure, capillarity, it is growing from north to south as a balancing factor. The governor of São Paulo is always strong as a presidential candidate, and Tarcísio occupies that position more naturally than [o governador mineiro Romeu] Zema [do Novo]”, it says.

Indeed, PSD and MDB, the acronyms are together in the process of reorganizing Congress in blocks, having removed the Republicans of Tarcísio from the old center and led to a reaction from the threatened mayor, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), who set up his own group.

In common, everyone has the potential to vote with the government, being part of the base, like the PSD, or not. And everyone feeds the PT’s certainty that its loyalty is also conditional on performance: both parties were with PT Dilma Rousseff until she lost support and suffered impeachment, with their votes.

Obviously, local factors speak volumes. Governors and their pens have enormous magnetism in them. To stay in the case of the PSD, the party elected 27 of the 399 mayors of Paraná in 2016. Four years later, with two under the state government of Ratinho Júnior, there were 122.

But there are fractures in the process, not least represented by the need for the current governor to prove himself faithful to his former guarantor, or at least to the votes he transferred to him —Bolsonaro had the same 55% of those valid in São Paulo in the second round.

Thus, its Republicans struggle to maintain space, and today it has around 50 mayors in its orbit, affiliated or in the process of becoming affiliated. And there is the issue of the PL, the president’s party, which made up the largest bench in the Legislative Assembly of São Paulo and its president, André do Prado, who is now of a similar size.

With that, Bolsonaro’s independence intended by Tarcísio needs to be measured step by step so as not to alienate this base. That, in the view of rivals of Kassab and the president of the MDB, federal deputy Baleia Rossi (SP), balanced the São Paulo game a little. “It was a brake on tidying up”, assesses Auricchio.

The PSDB is counting on this to try to reposition itself, at least in the state, but the resistance to the new national leadership of Governor Eduardo Leite (RS) does not bring good prospects. The acronym counts, for the municipal election of 2024, with the return of former caciques.

Recent local surveys show the toucans quite well placed in places like São José dos Campos, the party’s historic stronghold until today’s vice-governor Felício Ramuth migrated to the PSD, with former mayor Eduardo Cury.

Even for this reason, the accession packages negotiated by Tarcísio’s base usually include, in cities without candidates for re-election, the affiliation of the nominee for succession. In the capital, which governed until the death of re-elected Bruno Covas in 2021, the dilemma is between a proper name or support for the former deputy of the deceased, Ricardo Nunes (MDB), who is part of the Tarcísio project.

In general, São Paulo follows the general trend of downsizing the party cadre, if not nominally, but by blocs and federations — the PSDB itself is negotiating one with Podemos. “This will all determine who the survivors will be,” says the mayor of São Caetano.