The governor of Paraná, (), announced on Tuesday night (31) the PSD affiliation of the former candidate for Mayor of Curitiba. She was the main opponent of Ratinho Junior’s group in 2024, when she competed in the municipal contest against (PSD).
In the PSD, the new affiliation surprised supporters, as the electoral campaign in the capital was fierce and marked by an exchange of attacks.
Until this Tuesday’s announcement, Graeml presented himself as and was affiliated with União Brasil at the invitation of the senator. But the former judge migrated to PL to make his candidacy for the Government viable and, on the ticket, there was no space for Graeml – federal deputy Filipe Barros (PL) and former prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol (Novo) occupy the two vacancies in the Senate race.
Now, the assessment within the PSD is that Graeml could join the party’s ticket in the Senate race or even as a candidate for vice-governor. The head of the ticket has not yet been defined and Ratinho Junior has found it difficult to build a candidacy capable of defeating Moro, who has appeared ahead in polls of voting intentions.
Graeml gained political prominence as a commentator and member of , a defender of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL). In the 2024 election campaign, she even criticized Gilberto Kassab’s PSD — a name that “the whole of Brazil rejects”, as the then candidate stated during a television debate. At the time, she also positioned herself as the candidate against the system and the state and municipal machines that supported Pimentel.
On the other side, Ratinho Junior’s group worked on that campaign to try to deconstruct Graeml’s image and refute the opponent’s radicalism, with statements such as “ideology doesn’t put food on the table”. The governor, who last week, has also repeated that the country is “tired of the ideological fight”.
Pimentel won that election in the second round. After the campaign, Graeml joined Podemos.
The union between Ratinho Junior and Graeml was announced on the same day that he publicly declared that he is not interested in abandoning his mandate in the capital to run for the state Executive. The mayor was being strongly pressured to put himself as an option for Palácio Iguaçu, given Ratinho Junior’s difficulty in defining a name.
One of the arguments used by Pimentel was that he could never run against (MDB), for whom he was vice-president for two terms. Greca left the PSD for the MDB to maintain her pre-candidacy for governor. The opposition camp also already has a defined name, that of state deputy Requião Filho (PDT).
The governor’s favorite is the Secretary of Cities, Guto Silva (PSD), but his performance in the polls so far has not encouraged the group. The president of the Legislative Assembly, Alexandre Curi (PSD), has the broad support of mayors from the party, but has not yet managed to break Ratinho Junior’s resistance to his name.
On Tuesday night, the governor recorded a video alongside Graeml and published it on his social networks. “For a few days now we have been talking a lot about Paraná, Brazil, about what unites us, which are family values, economic freedom, private property”, he began.
“And I invited her to come to the PSD to help us think about the Paraná of the future but, above all, to work on the present”, said Ratinho Junior.
Graeml responded that it was an honor to be invited to join “a team that has already built a strong state.”
“I’m here at the beginning of my political journey. For me it’s all new, even this issue of party politics, but we have to build alliances. We’ve already been on opposite sides in the municipal election and, thinking about a bigger project, it’s important that we can walk as a group”, she stated.
