The electoral campaign in Rio de Janeiro goes unnoticed and, with regard to the race for mayor, seems incapable of arousing the passions of the electorate. The impression one has is that the election scheduled for October 6 will be nothing more than a formality and will have as its sole purpose confirm another four years of mandate for Mayor Eduardo Paes. The numbers released by the more traditional polling institutes have only served to confirm this trend.
The Datafolha survey published last Thursday showed the mayor with 56% of the voters’ preference. If this percentage is confirmed at the polls, everything will be resolved in the first round – and, if the day is sunny, the Rio de Janeiro voter will be able to reserve Sunday, October 27, the date that the electoral calendar reserves for the second round, to go to the beach and rest. And you may, while sunbathing, think that at the same time the people of São Paulo, Belo Horizonte and most of the 101 Brazilian municipalities with more than 200 thousand voters, will be in the queues of the polling stations to choose their mayor.
This is what the polls show. But, please, be very calm at this time! Unless we are talking about Venezuela, where the electoral result is what the tyrant Nicolás Maduro wants it to be, it is necessary to be clear that the polls only manifest themselves after they are opened. The voter owns his own vote! And, over the 42 days that still separate us from October 6, a lot can happen. As much as the polls capture the trend of the moment, the voter’s choice may, in the coming weeks, be influenced by facts strong enough to cause radical changes in the scenario.
That’s right! The winds of politics can change course quickly. A sentence said at the wrong time, a statement out of context, a lie revealed… Everything can, in certain situations, make the voter change his mind about voting. In other words, although a hurricane is necessary to prevent Paes’ reelection, the hypothesis of a change in winds cannot be ruled out. And no one better than the mayor himself to know this.
Distant dream
In 2018, Paes started as a clear favorite in the elections for governor of Rio and there did not seem to be anyone among his opponents capable of threatening his leadership. Until, in the final stretch, he was surprised by Wilson Witzel and when he realized it, the victory was already guaranteed. At the present time, this means absolutely nothing. But it serves to show that basing oneself on the results of the polls to consider the elections won ahead of time is not a recommendable attitude neither for the politician himself nor for those who want him to win.
It is enough that Alexandre Ramagem (PL), who appears in Datafolha with 9% of the votes, and Tarcísio Motta (PSOL), who attracted the preference of 7% of the 840 interviewed by Datafolha, added to the other six names involved in the electoral process (which, together, reached 9%), add up to 50% plus one among the valid votes for the campaign to be taken to the second round. If this happens, someone who is currently pointed out as an underdog can gain momentum and threaten the mayor’s favoritism. It is not easy. Quite the opposite. But it’s not absolutely impossible either…
Be that as it may, at least so far, this time there does not seem to be any storm on the horizon capable of growing and jeopardizing Paes’ victory. The curious thing is that this, instead of decreasing, only increases the importance of the elections in Rio in the national political scenario. As was said in this space weeks ago, along with the position of mayor, the voter will define the names of the councilors who will be responsible for the Rio de Janeiro Legislature in the next four years – and this, let’s face it, is no small thing. With the dispute for the Executive, it seems, defined so far in advance, how will the election for the City Council be?
Contact with the people
The Pedro Ernesto Palace houses the second largest City Council in the country. It is second only to São Paulo, which has 55 members. With its 51 seats, it is larger than 21 of the country’s 27 Legislative Assemblies. In other words, even though the election for the municipal Executive already seems decided, it is necessary to turn attention to the importance of the municipal Legislature. It is necessary to reinforce with the voter the importance of choosing councilors prepared to defend the most appropriate public policies for those who live, work, study or just visit Rio.
Although the substantial improvement in the quality of the councilors and the debates they hold in the plenary of the Chamber seems an increasingly distant and naïve dream, it is essential to continue hitting this key. The councilman is an important piece in the Brazilian political game – if not for other reasons, at least for the fact that he is the only holder of an elective office who, by virtue of his attributions, is obliged to maintain permanent contact with the people.
The election for councilor is important in any of the 5569 Brazilian municipalities, but in the specific case of Rio it is even more important. The visibility of the city on the national scene attracts the curiosity of the entire country and, for this reason, the work they do is more noticed, inspected and criticized than it would be if they were elected in cities that do not have the same projection. This goes for good and for bad.
The commotion caused by the barbaric and inexcusable crime that took the life of Marielle Franco in 2018 would not have been the same if she had been a councilor in a municipality other than Rio. Between 1998 and 2022, the state of Rio de Janeiro recorded 94 murders in which the victims exercised some political activity — and almost 70% of them were precisely councilors. The data are from an academic research carried out by sociologist Huri Paz, from the University of São Paulo.
Violence against politicians in the state, of course, continued after the survey. Last year, for example, councilman Aldecyr Maldonado (PL) was shot dead in the municipality of São Gonçalo and there was no mobilization for those responsible for the crime to be identified and arrested. The repercussion of Marielle’s death weighed, of course, the fact that she was a woman, black and leftist. Also weighing in was the fact that his coreligionists had kept history alive and not allowed the brutality to fall into oblivion. But the repercussion of the crime, as barbaric and cruel as it was, would not be the same if Marielle were a councilor in some less visible municipality.
Sterile debate
Regarding the election for mayor of Rio this year, there is a point that goes beyond the limits of the municipality and needs to be observed as a positive sign. Although he enters the race with the support of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Eduardo Paes has never been 100% identified with left-wing ideas. On the contrary, it is the very personification of the center. Moderate and attentive to the duties of the position, he has always revealed, in his passages through the municipal executive, much more concerned with matters of interest to the city hall than with the ideological agenda that separates the right of Alexandre Ramagem from the left of Tarcísio Motta.
In other words, between the left and the right, the voter of Rio, according to the opinion polls released so far, is preferring the center. And there are several possible interpretations for this trend. The first is that the voter’s patience for the merely ideological debate that has taken over the national political scene in recent years may be showing clear signs of exhaustion. The politician who manages to break through the blockade of this sterile debate and present feasible solutions to the problems of the city, the state or the country will have a much better chance of winning the sympathy and vote of the voter than he would have if he stayed, as seems to have become fashionable in the country, only criticizing his opponents for their political preferences.
The world of politics is still full of people who seem not to have realized this – but every day the signs of citizen exhaustion are clearer with the endless quarrel between the right and the left. The voter, increasingly, implies that, for him, what matters is to choose someone who is capable of solving his problems in the fields of health, education, mobility and – in these elections more than in all others – public security. Whoever achieves this feat, whatever their position, will have a better chance of being elected.
Municipal elections — as proven not only by the studies carried out by political scientists, but also by the Brazilian political tradition itself — are not decided by the least criteria that guide the choices in the federal and municipal fields. In them, in general, the choices are motivated by problems that are much more objective and visible than the reasons that define the votes at the state or federal level. Presenting the solution to a crater may not elect a deputy, but the promise to plug the holes in the streets of a given neighborhood may elect a councilor.
Often, the possibility of solving a local problem makes voters unite around acronyms and candidates that would not be equally welcomed in an election for deputy or governor. And this does not only happen in large cities, as is the case in Rio, but also in smaller municipalities and states in other regions of the country.
In the early 1980s, to cite an example that has been half forgotten, there was nothing more important at the national level than redemocratization. All the choices revolved around this purpose and the politicians were divided between those who wanted and those who did not want the military to remain in power. It was in that polarized environment that composer Luiz Gonzaga, the King of Baião, announced his intention to run for mayor of his hometown, Exu, in Pernambuco, for the PDS (a party created in 1979 to support military governments).
For many people committed to redemocratization who admired Gonzagão for his music, affiliation to the “party of the dictatorship” was an unforgivable sin and he was pointed out as a traitor. It turns out that the old Lua, as he was known, was not concerned with the national situation. What he wanted was simply to put an end to the war between the Sampaio and Alencar families, which lasted over three decades, generated several deaths and turned little Exu into a synonym for violence in Brazil.
Gonzaga did not run for mayor, but the simple intention of running for office generated a debate that, in the end, was enough to appease the spirits in the Chapada do Araripe region. This is just one example and shows that the issues that are at stake in municipal disputes, in some circumstances, overlap with national issues and their solutions depend on decisions taken from the bottom up. Period.
Returning to Rio de Janeiro, there is an insistent attempt here to transform the municipal dispute into a battle of the holy war that has involved the PT, of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the PL, of former President Jair Bolsonaro. From what can be concluded from the statements of some politicians, this year’s electoral dispute does not seem to have the purpose of choosing the name that will administer one of the most complex municipalities in Brazil and the world, which is Rio, for the next four years. It will only serve to measure the temperature around the dispute between the left and the right that will be fought in two years, in 2026.
Party hierarchy
This debate resurfaced last Tuesday, after Senator Romário, who is affiliated with Bolsonaro’s PL, announced support for Eduardo Paes, who has the sympathy of President Lula. It was enough for Romário to take this position for the president of the PL directory in Rio, deputy Altineu Côrtes, to manifest himself. He criticized the former player’s position and said that the directory will discuss internally a way to punish him.
It is unlikely that any punishment will happen. Be that as it may, the senator never hid his resentment towards Jair Bolsonaro who, in the 2022 elections, made his reelection difficult by publicly declaring his support for Daniel Silveira — who was vying for the PTB seat. From this point of view, he is just paying back.
Whatever motivation you have and whether the senator is right or wrong for acting in this way, Romário’s position brings up an important discussion. It allows us to resume the debate that has already been held on other occasions in this space and which deals with a fundamental aspect of democracy: the role of political parties in political life.
The ideal would be that, from the highest to the most basic position in the party hierarchy, everyone spoke the same language and was guided by the same playbook. And that the politicians chosen by a party would reproduce in the exercise of their mandate what they promised to the voter during the campaign. But, in a country where the fashion is to forget the commitments made to the voter in the name of one’s own interests, demanding coherence from anyone seems to be, in itself, an incoherent stance.
Last week, while Romário’s insubordination was debated in the press, a survey based on data from the electoral justice showed that, from North to South, at least 85 municipalities in the country (none in the state of Rio de Janeiro) will have candidates who will compete for mayor with the support of both the PT and the PL. This represents only 1.5% of the 5,569 Brazilian municipalities – that is, a drop of water in Guanabara Bay. But, in any case, it is enough to fuel the discussion around party loyalty
Bolsonaro, of course, did not like it, and promised to frame the directories that joined his arch-enemy. He would do better if he remembered what Luiz Gonzaga sang and said that this “is very little, it is almost nothing!” And that these alliances of occasion have more to do with the solution of local problems than with ideology. That is not always the factor that determines political choices.
