Conservative Bolsonaro Allies Dominate in Brazil Congressional Elections

Members and allies of President Jair Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL) swept Congressional elections in Brazil on Sunday, sending multiple former members of the conservative president’s cabinet to the legislature and ensuring that, if reelected, Bolsonaro will have strong support for his agenda from lawmakers.

Brazilians went to the polls nationwide on Sunday to choose the next president, hundreds of lawmakers in the Chamber of Deputies and Senate, and governors for their 27 states. Bolsonaro came in second place in the presidential election by only five percentage points, a significant improvement over the performance national polls predicted. His main rival, socialist ex-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, received about 48 percent of the vote, coming in under the 50-percent threshold necessary to win the presidency outright. In Brazil, if no candidate passes 50 percent support, the top two candidates go on to a runoff election without third parties, scheduled this year for October 30.

Bolsonaro managed to press the race into a runoff election despite Lula receiving an endorsement from actor Mark Ruffalo last week.

Prior to the vote, some polls found Lula with alleged leads of up to 14 percent above Bolsonaro, despite having been convicted of stealing millions in taxpayers’ dollars while president and sentenced to 25 years in prison. The 76-year-old was allowed to run for office again despite this after the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), the nation’s top court, abruptly overturned his sentence last year, allowing him to run against Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro has made Lula’s conviction a central theme of his campaign, urging Brazilians not to elect “an ex-convict drunkard” at campaign rallies.

At press time, vote tallies show Bolsonaro’s PL gaining 63 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, not counting candidates of other parties who are conservative and sympathize with Bolsonaro. The PL is expected to maintain a solid majority in Congress. The conservative coalition featuring PL and allied parties is expected to consist of 235 of the 513 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT) and leftist allies will take up 124 seats.

Candidates with close ties to Bolsonaro – including at least nine former presidential cabinet members — fared particularly well on Sunday. Among the new Congressmen to be sworn in are former environment minister Ricardo Salles, former health minister Eduardo Pazuello, former minister for women Damares Alves, former agriculture minister Tereza Cristina, and former development minister Rogerio Marino.

Pazuello’s election – he received more votes than any other legislative candidate in Rio de Janeiro – is a particular vote of confidence for Bolsonaro as Pazuello faced aggressive criticism from the left for being at the helm of Bolsonaro’s Chinese coronavirus response, which included staunch opposition to business lockdowns and civil rights restrictions.

The most prominent former Bolsonaro official to win a seat in Congress was Sergio Moro, the Paraná judge who led trials in what is now known as “Operation Car Wash.” Investigators discovered during the “Operation Car Wash” investigation that dozens of politicians during the presidencies of Lula and his protégé, Dilma Rousseff, had been receiving bribes from private contractors in exchange for securing overpriced contracts for infrastructure projects. Moro’s role in the investigations was pivotal to securing Lula’s convictions.

Moro served for a brief time as Bolsonaro’s minister of justice, riding the national popularity that had seen his likeness become a staple of popular anti-corruption protests. Moro resigned from the position in 2020 claiming that Bolsonaro had not given him the necessary freedom to pursue criminal investigations against corrupt politicians, allegations Bolsonaro denied.

Rosângela Moro, the former justice minister’s wife, also won a seat in the Chamber of Deputies on Sunday.

Brazilian newspapers also reported that the 2022 congressional race marked the return of one of the most popular politicians in Brazilian history: a former professional clown known by his stage name, Tiririca (the name of an extremely bitter plant, roughly meaning “grumpy” or “ill-tempered”). Voters sent Tiririca to Congress for a fourth time on Sunday.

Tiririca served seven years in Congress– initially elected with the slogan “It can’t get any worse” – prior to his resignation in 2017, when he delivered a barnburner speech in which he declared himself ashamed of his fellow lawmakers and too disgusted to continue serving in the chamber.

“There are 513 deputies; only eight come regularly. And I’m one of those eight, and I’m a circus clown,” he said at the time. Tiririca retired with one of the top attendance records in the history of the Brazilian Congress, though he only sponsored one bill: to formally make the circus part of Brazil’s cultural heritage.

Following the confirmation of a runoff vote at the end of the month, Bolsonaro expressed “total confidence” that he would defeat Lula.

“Today, we defeated lies – Datafolha [a national pollster] was saying 51 percent [for Lula] to 30-something,” Bolsonaro noted. “We have a second round now where everything gets equalized and we will show the Brazilian people a better [option], especially to those in the classes most affected by the ‘stay at home, the economy and people come later’ policy.”

Bolsonaro promised to argue to the Brazilian people that “changes to the left … all the countries that change get worse.”

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.