It went wrong once, in 2018, but Rio’s MDB always arrives at the campaign alongside the favorite to win. It’s been like this since post-Rosinha Garotinho, elected by the PSB in 2002 and affiliated with the party when she was in the chair.
In the following dispute, in 2006, the party that now announces support for Eduardo Paes (PSD) put on the ballot who would be the main figure not only of the party, but of the state of Rio in the last two decades: Sérgio Cabral. Re-elected four years later, he took over fellow emedebista Luiz Fernando Pezão.
It was in 2018, with Paes himself, that the MDB’s sense of power failed. Then affiliated with the former DEM, Paes arrived as a favorite for the state election and had the support of the party — which, weakened by Lava-Jato, did not nominate a vice president, nor did it launch a candidate for the Senate. The Bolsonarista wave, however, was a tsunami in Rio and boosted the underdog Wilson Witzel, who defeated Paes in the second round.
Opportunity with security!
With the fall of Witzel via impeachment, the MDB was once again on the victorious side in 2022, on the ticket of Cláudio Castro. Washington Reis was the original vice-president, but was blocked by the Electoral Court and ended up replaced by Thiago Pampolha, at the time at União Brasil, who would migrate to the emedebista ranks in the middle of his term.
Until the two recent victories of the right, the party had been the only one to break the dominance of what is called the “brizolista family” in Rio. Before Cabral, who consolidated the golden era of the MDB in Rio de Janeiro, Moreira Franco, a historical member of the party, appeared as an isolated governor who was not Leonel Brizola or someone formed in the labor leader’s group.
Marcello Alencar, Anthony Garotinho and Rosinha Garotinho broke with the PDT chief at some point, but only became prominent figures after their relationship with the gaucho.
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The history of the MDB in Rio, therefore, is full of protagonism: it elected three of the nine governors that the state has had since redemocratization. When he is down, as in recent years, he also relies on high doses of physiologism and a sense of opportunity, a characteristic he repeats now when embracing Paes almost eight months before the day of the vote.
