With him out of the presidential race and , articulating his own candidate, he enters the election year divided between aligning himself with the candidacy of (PL) or preserving the relationship with the government, defended by the leadership of the party.
This division is due to regional factors, such as the alliances built during this term between leaders of the party with Bolsonaristas and PT members, and internal uncertainty about the convenience of supporting a PSD candidacy at the national level.
In , the party is experiencing a moment of expected growth with Tarcísio. Deputies and councilors from the party evaluate him as a favorite for re-election and, therefore, see it as safer to follow the position already expressed by the governor in support of Flávio.
Last week, Tarcísio made an important gesture to the Republicans and other center-right parties, Roberto Carneiro, as secretary of the Civil House.
Under reservation, a party leader in the state told the Sheet that the perspective is that Carneiro will align the entire center-right of São Paulo around the governor. The natural path, therefore, is for the parties to follow the plans drawn up by Tarcísio for the national plan, still in the vision of this ally.
Under reservation, there are party members who say they consider the scenario open. Parliamentarians from the party in São Paulo say that Flávio’s candidacy is still seen as uncertain and maintain their desire to see Tarcísio in the presidential race.
However, the calculation of the acronym goes through the articulations made in other states that link the Republicans to the Lula government. The most obvious example is Pernambuco.
The state is an electoral stronghold for the Minister of Ports and Airports, Silvio Costa Filho, who is expected to leave office in the next few days to compete for a seat in the Senate. Lula maintains a historical relationship with the minister’s political group.
“I’m going to work so that the center parties can help with President Lula’s re-election project,” said the minister, at the end of December, in an interview with CNN. At the time, Costa Filho stated that he sought out leaders from other parties to articulate support for the PT member.
The PSD and the Republicans are acronyms with similar profiles. They represent, respectively, the fourth and fifth largest benches in , with 47 and 44 seats. Both appointed ministers for the Lula government and, at the same time, control the São Paulo government (with Kassab and Tarcísio).
The party was born in 2005 as the Partido Municipalista Renovador (PMR), created by leaders of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, and became more pragmatic as it grew.
The national president of the party, , prefers to avoid signaling any of the scenarios before building consensus. “Nothing is certain yet. We will have to talk to the party and see the majority’s feelings”, said the Sheet.
According to the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) calendar, the registration of candidacies takes place until August 15, which allows the party to postpone decisions until the final stretch of the pre-campaign.
Last Wednesday (28), in São Paulo, during his first interview as a member of the PSD, the governor of Goiás, —one of the party’s presidential candidates, alongside Eduardo Leite from Rio Grande do Sul and Ratinho Jr. from Paraná—, said that in order to build an option for the center-right voter that was not Flávio.
On Thursday (29), upon leaving his visit to Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in Papudinha, Tarcísio stated that the former president supported Caiado’s movement and said that everyone would be against Lula in a possible second round.
However, among party members, the option of supporting the PSD is considered the most remote. In addition to doubts regarding the possibility of the party’s candidacy reaching the second round, the relationship between Kassab and Marcos Pereira has undergone recent friction.
Pereira was tipped, in 2024, to assume the presidency of the Chamber, running for the nomination of the then president (PP-AL), with the support of President Lula and the PT. Kassab, in turn, defended the nomination of Antonio Brito (PSD-BA) and did not give in to the republican’s requests. Without consensus, Lira ended up nominating Hugo Motta (Republicanos-PB), who won.
After the defeat, Pereira gave an interview to Sheet . “I told him [Kassab]: ‘if you support me, I will be eternally grateful and indebted to you. If you don’t support me, I will also remember, every time I look at you, that I wasn’t president of the Chamber because of you,'” he said.
