(Bloomberg) -- An insurgent candidate is splitting the Brazilian right ahead of Sunday municipal elections, testing Jair Bolsonaro’s grip on the rabid movement he has sought to lead even after losing the presidency two years ago.
Pablo Marcal, a 37-year-old businessman, influencer and former life coach, has surged into contention in Sao Paulo’s mayoral race, moving into a three-way tie ahead of a first round vote that is likely to generate a runoff later this month.
Marcal’s rise has upended a contest that began as the latest battle between Bolsonaro and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva: Earlier this year, Bolsonaro endorsed current Mayor Ricardo Nunes, a comparably moderate choice who appeared well positioned for a matchup with Lula-backed leftist congressman Guilherme Boulos.
But a Datafolha poll released Thursday showed that 51% of Sao Paulo voters who backed Bolsonaro in 2022 now support Marcal, who has waged a brash, unapologetically right-wing campaign that more closely resembles the former leader’s political style than Nunes does.
Marcal’s success has put Bolsonaro in a difficult position as his movement looks toward a 2026 election in which he is banned from participating: Six years after he seized control of a rudderless Brazilian right and reshaped it in his image, he is suddenly facing his own challenge from an outsider seeking to keep Bolsonarismo, as that movement is known, from softening its tone.
Bolsonaro’s closest allies dismiss the idea that Marcal poses a significant threat to his leadership of the right.
“President Bolsonaro’s leadership is very respected and very consolidated,” Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, one of the erstwhile leader’s sons, said in a September interview in Brasilia. “Without Bolsonaro, Pablo Marcal would not have this popularity.”
But Marcal’s fiery approach to the race has clearly generated fervor among the base.
Marcal brands opponents with pejorative nicknames and criticizes the press. He compares himself to former US President Donald Trump and invokes the need for the aggressive security policies of El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. He often speaks out against abortion and laces speeches with religious metaphors in an effort to appeal to a growing base of evangelical voters. And he blares his messages to a massive social media following: Marcal boasts 5.6 million followers on Instagram alone.
His popularity was visible during a Sept. 7 rally in Sao Paulo organized by the former president.
“Bolsonaro is done, Marcal has begun,” a slogan printed on a Brazilian flag spread across the city’s main avenue read. “Pablo Marcal: President of Brazil.”
Leading conservatives like Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas have tiptoed around the idea that they will run for president in 2026, wary of alienating Bolsonaro by appearing too eager to assume his mantle. Marcal, by contrast, has openly asserted on the campaign trail that no one owns the Brazilian right and makes little effort to mask his future ambitions.
That has irked Bolsonaro allies like evangelical pastor Silas Malafaia, who has begun releasing daily videos attacking Marcal. Valdemar Costa Neto, the head of Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party, said in an interview that he had warned the candidate to calm down.
During an appearance on a conservative radio show last month, Bolsonaro joined in, suggesting that the right couldn’t trust Marcal and that he had entered the Sao Paulo race “already launching himself as a candidate for president.”
Marcal’s rise poses a particular challenge to figures like Freitas and Costa Neto. The Sao Paulo governor is widely considered the right’s most likely candidate for president in 2026. But Freitas, like Nunes, is more technocratic than militant, and his close ally’s struggles to secure Bolsonaro’s base suggest he would face similar challenges two years from now.
Freitas, Bolsonaro and Marcal all declined interview requests.
Costa Neto, meanwhile, has led the push to rebrand Bolsonarismo as a more center-right movement capable of recapturing some of the moderate voters who abandoned the former president in the 2022 election. He began the year aiming for 1,000 mayoral wins — about 20% of the total — for the Liberal Party, an effort that rested on Bolsonaro backing more centrist candidates in places like Sao Paulo.
But ahead of the vote, he reduced the target to between 800 and 900 victories.
“It’s difficult to convince Bolsonaro,” Costa Neto said, adding that the former president still “scares” more moderate figures who might join the party.
Costa Neto has set a goal of winning enough Senate seats to form a majority coalition in the 2026 races, and said it is still possible to pull in more centrist candidates.
Others are already pulling Bolsonarismo in another direction: Eduardo Bolsonaro, another of the president’s sons, has started an institute to train candidates and sought to bolster its ties to right-wing movements across the planet. The lawmaker already commands Brazil’s version of CPAC — the US conservative summit — and has plans to expand it to other countries, he said in an interview during the event in July.
But Marcal is threatening the central premise behind the various plans for the movement’s future: The idea that Bolsonaro is the undisputed leader who will determine its course.
“The Pablo Marcal phenomenon reveals a kind of fracture in Bolsonarismo,” said Isabela Kalil, an anthropologist who studies right-wing movements. “I think Bolsonarismo has room for multiple leaders. But I don’t know if Bolsonarismo has room for a battle over its main leadership.”
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.