União Brasil bets on city halls and PSDB assets in SP – 04/13/2023 – Power

Greater partner of the toucans in São Paulo, União Brasil suffered a blow with the collapse of the PSDB, when it lost deputies and space in the government.

Until last year, the party occupied a coveted position on the board of directors of Alesp (São Paulo Legislative Assembly) and was responsible for commanding a billionaire budget in the Executive.

With the defeat of Rodrigo Garcia (PSDB) in the first round of the government election, whose vice was Geninho Zuliani (União Brasil), the party supported Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans), but was left out of the top positions. In addition, there was a significant reduction in the benches of Alesp and São Paulo deputies in the Chamber.

Now, the caption’s bet is to use the attraction of money and TV time to try to attract mayors from the interior and occupy spaces, including those that today belong to the PSDB.

The crisis in União Brasil is not restricted to São Paulo: a rift led the Minister of Tourism, Daniela Carneiro, and at least five other deputies from Rio de Janeiro to ask the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) for their disaffiliations without losing their mandates.

In Alesp, compared to last year, the party’s bench fell from 11 to 7 deputies. Now, instead of occupying the second secretary of the House, the party has the second vice-presidency.

The São Paulo group of União Brasil in the Chamber of Deputies today has six members, two fewer than last year.

During the toucan administration of João Doria and after Rodrigo Garcia, the acronym still commanded one of the main gears of the state machine, the coveted Transport and Logistics portfolio, owner of a budget of R$ 11.5 billion last year. The folder’s structure is now in the hands of Natália Rezende, a technician who worked with Tarcísio at the Ministry of Infrastructure.

One of the main leaders of the party in the state, the mayor of São Paulo, Milton Leite, minimizes the impact of the toucan defeat on União Brasil. Originally from the DEM, he maintains that the decrease in the bench happened due to the non-reelection of the wing coming from the PSL.

“If we look at that it was the DEM, we grew up”, he says to the report, in a room in the party’s municipal directory in the capital, on the day that the single ticket he heads was elected to command the Union in the city.

The municipal seat is in the south of the capital, a region where the Leite dynasty, also formed by his sons, deputies Milton Leite Filho (state) and Alexandre Leite (federal), is almost omnipresent. There, the report found social movements, trade unionists, members of the samba school, among other groups from the base of the clan.

Among the plans of the Union, says the councilor who was elected mayor for the third time, is to maintain the alliance with the group of Ricardo Nunes (MDB) in power in the capital of São Paulo and expand the legend in the countryside. Even at the expense of a predictable reduction in the space of the PSDB, now excluded from the state machine.

In December, the PSDB had 238 mayors and, right behind, came the Union, with 78.

Unlike the toucans, the Union has a large bench in the Chamber, second only to the PL and PT, and has the attraction of money and TV time that can attract new allies.

“From the picture, it is possible that the PSDB will lose city halls. I’m not here cursing or demonizing or wishing harm to the PSDB, but today we see their situation a little more fragile than before”, says Leite.

The dispute for the toucan estate will be fierce with parties more aligned with Tarcísio, such as Gilberto Kassab’s PSD, the PL and the Republicans.

In the capital of São Paulo, the fight will also be tough. Leite is the guarantor of the idea that Ricardo Nunes embarks on the zero tariff plan in the transport system, a card that, in his calculations, could lead to the mayor’s re-election in the first round, against a competitive opponent like Guilherme Boulos (PSOL) and under the risk of having to compete with some bolsonarista.

Leite’s son, Alexandre Leite, is one of those tipped for Nunes’ vice-president, although the leader of the Union claims that the party has several names and that the party will leave the current mayor free to decide.

At the state level, Leite says he has nothing to complain about Tarcísio and, without giving details, that the party is contemplated by the governor. Behind the scenes, however, there are charges.

For São Paulo councilor Adilson Amadeu (União Brasil), the party deserved more space, not least because of the results in the Transport and Logistics portfolio. “If the state government does not want to take advantage of União Brasil, the governor is the loser”, he says.

Amadeu compares the situation of the Union, after the defeat in the dispute for the government, with that of a patient in recovery. “He was shaken, they removed his appendix, he’s recovering. It wasn’t a serious surgery,” he says.

The party was formed from the merger of the DEM with the PSL in 2021. The latter acronym surfed the wave of Bolsonarism in 2018, but was unable to keep its breath away from Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and did not re-elect several of his names.

“União Brasil was born saying it was very big, but when it went to the real game it realized that its size was not that big”, says political scientist Bruno Silva, researcher at the Laboratory of Politics and Government of Unesp Araraquara.

In the state of São Paulo, remembers Silva, with the election of Tarcísio, the main field of attraction became the parties that orbit Bolsonarism.

The researcher says that, weakened by the tucana debacle, it would be up to the União Brasil to embrace Bolsonarism or try to cram itself into the increasingly restricted space for the moderate right, which today commands the party.

If anti-PTism is the rule in the state, the situation is more complex in the federal scenario, since the party even received three ministries in the Lula (PT) government. Among the São Paulo federal deputies who were not reelected, for example, is Junior Bozella, who is now working with Marcelo Freixo (PSB) at Embratur, from the former PSL wing.

At the state level, he admits that the party was in a less advantageous situation than other early allies of Tarcísio, but says he believes that the composition should happen with the state deputies of the party, which has the fifth largest group of Alesp.

In the House, one of the governor’s nods to the Union was the appointment of Guto Zacarias as deputy leader of the government.

He is part of the wing of the party that is made up of members of the MBL (Movimento Brasil Livre), along with Kim Kataguiri, as a federal deputy. If the group actually manages to make the creation of a party viable, as they arrived to announce its members, both deputies could be new casualties of the Union in the future.

Union Brazil X-Ray

Federal deputies: 59 (6 from SP), the third largest bench

Senators: 9 (none from SP), fourth largest bench

State deputies in Alesp: 7, fifth largest stand

national president: Luciano Bivar

Foundation: October 6, 2021