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Among the most important cities that will decide their “mayors” on Sunday, only Rio de Janeiro seems to have an announced outcome with the defeat of the current mayor, the ultra-conservative evangelical bishop, Marcelo Crivella, and the election of Eduardo Paes, who has already been in office.
In the days leading up to the second round, polls indicated that Paes continued to hold a solid lead, over twenty percentage points, leaving little room for doubt. Perhaps that is why the Rio campaign was one of the most violent of this second round.
The support of some left-wing parties for Paes – a lesser evil compared to the evangelical bishop – led Crivella’s campaign to spread messages that linked the candidate to flags he did not defend, such as the legalization of soft drugs.
“Eduardo Paes and his friends defend the legalization of abortion, the liberation of drugs, gay kits in schools ”, reads a pamphlet distributed on the door of an evangelical church, according to the Newspaper.
The political scientist Sérgio Abranches sees Crivella “very desperate”. “Crivella is running a very dirty campaign, which is alienating the voters,” says the analyst to PÚBLICO, from Rio de Janeiro. Crivella’s likely defeat also represents a defeat for President Jair Bolsonaro, who is left without a local ally in their electoral dispute.
A surprisingly tough campaign also took place in Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, disputed to the millimeter by two cousins: Marília Arraes, from the Workers Party (PT), and João Campos, from the Brazilian Socialist Party. In a debate, Arraes even called his opponent “loose”, who got him into corruption cases in the PT. The tension between the two is “shocking local society,” says Abranches.
For the PT, Recife represents the only possibility that the party can conquer an important state capital in these elections, after a very weak first round. “Recife is important, but the truth is that the PT did very badly in other states of the Northeast where it was always strong,” observes the political scientist.
In Porto Alegre, in Rio Grande do Sul, a rare compromise solution is being tested between the forces of the left. Manuela D’Ávila, of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), has the support of several parties of that political family, including the PT, which has renounced having its own candidate, and seeks to defeat Sebastião Melo, of the Brazilian Democratic Movement, to whom surveys attribute a slight advantage.
All against Bolsonaro
The first round was interpreted as a defeat for the candidates supported by Bolsonaro and in Fortaleza, the capital of Ceará, this is the issue that dominated the campaign. Disadvantaged at the polls, the candidate Captain Wagner has tried at all costs to remove the label of “bolsonarista”, which he considers responsible for the imminent defeat. In an interview, Wagner thanked the president for his support, but noted that he did not have a “political godfather.”
The connotation between Wagner and Bolsonaro brought together a very broad coalition of apparently irreconcilable parties, were it not for the opposition to the president. The candidate of the Democratic Labor Party (PDT), José Sarto, reaches the second round with the support of parties such as the PT or the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB) and even the Social Liberal Party (PSL), for which he was elected Bolsonaro. but abandoned it.
The situation in Fortaleza reflects the strong rejection of Bolsonaro in Brazil’s largest cities, making him “toxic support” for any candidate seeking to become “mayor,” Abranches says. The municipal campaign seems to have aggravated this scenario. A newspaper poll Or Balloon, based on Ibope polls, shows that the president’s approval fell in 23 of the 26 state capitals between October and November.
The political scientist believes that the pandemic was a fundamental element in guiding the elections of Brazilians for their municipalities. “He blocked the possibility of reelection of the ‘mayors’ who did it wrong and who accompanied Bolsonaro in the idea that the economy should take precedence over the pandemic,” says Abranches.
