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Bolsonaro’s Key Candidates Fare Poorly in Municipal Vote

Brazilians Go to Polls in Test to Bolsonaro’s Kingmaking Power

Candidates backed by President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s main capitals were defeated or had a weak performance at Sunday’s municipal elections, underscoring limits to the political influence of the Brazilian leader.

Bolsonaro’s Key Candidates Fare Poorly in Municipal Vote

The nation of 200 million chose mayors and city councilors in a vote widely-considered as a referendum on the first half of Bolsonaro’s four-year mandate. Official results from the country’s top electoral court show a challenging scenario for the far-right leader.

Bolsonaro threw his weight behind dozens of like-minded candidates across the country and explicitly supported allies in six Brazilian capitals. Four of them suffered an outright defeat while the others will face strong contenders in runoffs scheduled for Nov. 29. Presidential endorsements were complicated by the fact that Bolsonaro currently has no party -- he ditched the one that got him elected in 2018 and has since failed to launch his own.

In Sao Paulo, incumbent Bruno Covas won nearly 33% of the votes and will face off Guilherme Boulos, a leftist leader and former presidential contender who gained momentum in the final days of the campaign, with 20%. Celso Russomanno, a lawmaker and former TV showman backed by Bolsonaro, got little more than 10% of the votes.

Bolsonaro’s Key Candidates Fare Poorly in Municipal Vote

In Rio de Janeiro, Bolsonaro endorsed incumbent Marcelo Crivella, an influential evangelical pastor who ended second with nearly 22%. Crivella will defend his mandate against former Mayor Eduardo Paes, who prepared the city for the Olympic games in 2016 and received 37% of the votes.

Covas and Paes are both considered center-right candidates, raising the prospect that more moderate names may win or retain control of key cities after a conservative wave swept the country in recent years, following bitterly polarized elections.

Bolsonaro’s Key Candidates Fare Poorly in Municipal Vote

Bolsonaro Vs Mayors

Bolsonaro was fully aware that securing allies in Brazil’s more than 5,500 municipalities would have improved his re-election chances in 2022. Several mayors and governors, who retain significant power in Brazil’s federative system, became adversaries this year as they imposed lockdowns, resisting the president’s strategy to belittle Covid-19 and maintain the economy open at all costs.

After the results were released, however, the president seemed to minimize his efforts to support candidates, tweeting that they boiled down to “only four live Internet broadcasts totaling three hours.”

Lack of federal leadership during the pandemic helped make Brazil a global virus hotspot, with nearly 6 million infections and 165,000 deaths. Yet a $57 billion program of cash handouts to informal workers drove down poverty, cushioned the economic slump, and boosted the president’s approval rating to a record.

All that popularity, however, wasn’t always transferable to Bolsonaro-backed candidates during municipal elections in which voters are often more worried about local issues.

Bolsonaro’s Key Candidates Fare Poorly in Municipal Vote

“Bolsonaro’s power hadn’t been tested since he became president,” said Deysi Cioccari, a political scientist and professor at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo. “He emerges weaker from these elections.”

The absence of a national ruling party made it even more difficult for voters to identify the president’s allies, she said.

In a bid to make that connection clearer, more than 70 candidates to city council positions across Brazil have added “Bolsonaro” to their ballot names, even though they have no family ties with the president.

Winning the Hinterland

While massive cash handouts helped Bolsonaro become more popular in Brazil’s poorest regions that for years remained a bastion of the left, opinion polls show rejection of the president has been increasing in the country’s largest cities.

Bolsonaro’s Key Candidates Fare Poorly in Municipal Vote

Meanwhile, the leftist Workers’ Party that dominated Brazilian politics for more than a decade failed to make a comeback despite former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s efforts. The party’s only hope to elect a mayor in one of Brazil’s capitals is Marilia Arraes, who’s facing a runoff with another leftist candidate in the northestern city of Recife.

Other leftist parties may win major Brazilian cities, with the Communist Party disputing the southern city of Porto Alegre, the Socialism and Liberty Party fighting for the northern capital of Belem and the Democratic Labor Party vying for Fortaleza, in Brazil’s northeast.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.