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Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction for the Federal Supreme Court is not just a watershed in national politics. In Acre, where the former president obtained one of the country’s largest proportional votes in the last two presidential elections, the impact will be even deeper. The local right, which has always drank from the source source, enters 2026 in front of a crossroads.
On the one hand is Mailza Assis. The former senator and current deputy governor of Gladson Cameli is seen as the closest name to a moderate, dialogue right, who avoids extreme speeches and tries to position herself as a heiress of Cameli’s strategy: a more pragmatic than ideological project.
Former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL)/Photo: Antonio Augusto/STF
On the other hand, Senator Alan Rick, who embodies the faithful wing of pockets. He does not hide his positions: he defends the amnesty of the January 8 prisoners, flirts with the idea of impeachment of Moraes and, in each speech, keeps the flame of Bolsonaro lit in the state. Rick represents the hard core of the right that is still guided by the former president, even after the conviction.
But there is a third name that can shuffle the game: the mayor of Rio Branco, Tião Bocalom. If confirming a candidacy, Bocalom tends to be the most competitive among the pockets. He is from PL, Bolsonaro’s party, and has with his former president a direct connection-so much so that Bolsonaro himself and Michelle Bolsonaro personally came to Acre to officialize their affiliation. This seal, if converted to a state stage, can more naturally attract the vote faithful to pockets, reducing the space of Alan Rick and strengthening the presence of PL in the state.
Here is the curious point – and that opens the internal division. Even among Acre’s most fierce pockets, Alan Rick will not have automatic adhesion. Senator Márcio Bittar, Bocalom himself and Deputy Colonel Ulysses are three examples of politicians who defend Bolsonaro to the end, but they will hardly be together around Rick in 2026. This fragmentation reveals that the Acrean right, previously unified by the Bolsonaro electoral phenomenon, now seeks new directions – and no longer speaks the same language.
The biggest challenge will be to understand where the Acrea Bolsonarist voter, who was decisive in 2018 and 2022 to elect deputies, senators and even mayors under the “Bolsonaro wave umbrella.” Without the former president in the dispute, candidates will have to prove if they have their own breath or if they were just supporting their popularity.
Mailza can gain part of this electorate if she can present herself as a conservative manager without radicalism, repeating Gladson Cameli’s booklet. Already Alan bets that the loyalty to root pockets will still have enough weight to take him to the second round. But if you really go to the race, the tendency is that it steals the front of this audience, as it brings together the combination of party, direct seal and political style that most dialogues with the pocket base.
In the end, the question that will define 2026 in Acre is simple: Will the state continue to vote in Bolsonarism, even without Bolsonaro in the ballot box, or make room for a more palatable right, like Mailza Assis? The result will show whether pockets are just a phenomenon glued to the figure of the former president or if he has actually become an independent political identity in Acre.
