São Paulo governor emerges as leading successor to Bolsonaro

Even though he denies the claim, the name of São Paulo governor Tarcísio de Freitas continues to come up as a leading candidate to take Jair Bolsonaro’s place as the leader of Brazil’s right-wing political group.

While Bolsonaro, 70, focuses on appealing a 27-year sentence for plotting a failed coup, Brazil’s conservatives are without a clear candidate for the 2026 election.

Freitas, a former minister under Bolsonaro, runs a state that is home to 46 million people, the economic powerhouse of the country with a GDP equivalent to that of Belgium or Sweden.

Polls have shown the former army engineer as the candidate most likely to perform best against leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

But Freitas – a more traditional conservative than the far-right Bolsonaro – appears uneasy about being named as a possible contender.

“Jair Bolsonaro is our greatest political leader,” Freitas has said.

However, expectations are high that Bolsonaro will appoint a successor. Other potential candidates are said to be his wife, Michelle, or his son, the senator Flavio Bolsonaro.

Governor Freitas, a supporter of economic efficiency and strong policing, is a technocrat who had not run for office until he won the São Paulo governorship in 2022. His advisors describe him as a pragmatic leader, “unafraid of taking action.”

“If being pragmatic means finding immediate solutions to people’s problems, I agree with that description,” Freitas told AFP last week.

Competent and shrewd

Polished and poised with an intense gaze and faint facial scars, the 50-year-old governor comes across as approachable in public, but becomes forceful when speaking at the podium, delivering long streams of memorised statistics.

He is more measured than the firebrand Bolsonaro, yet knows how to match the political moment.

Just before the recent coup verdict, he launched a fierce attack against what he called the Supreme Court’s “dictatorship.”

Freitas is in favour of a controversial push by Congress to give amnesty to hundreds convicted of coup-related crimes, including Bolsonaro. He has even said that, if president, he would pardon him.

“Amnesty can help pacify the country. Brazil needs it to move forward,” he said.

Freitas, who was born in Rio de Janeiro, moved to São Paulo to enter the military academy, and retired as a captain at 33 to enter the civil service.

His first major position was as national director of infrastructure and transport under the leftist government of Dilma Rousseff.

Bolsonaro, impressed by his reputation as an efficient technocrat, chose him as infrastructure minister in 2019, later backing his campaign for governor of São Paulo.

“Freitas is competent and quite shrewd,” a European diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity. “But the Bolsonaro base hasn’t disappeared – as a candidate, he will have to win over the radical wing.”

Leonardo Paz, a political scientist at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, added: “The establishment sees him as an effective operator who wouldn’t spark the kind of unnecessary controversy Bolsonaro did.”

The left meanwhile criticises Freitas for supporting amnesty and not condemning Donald Trump’s steep tariffs on Brazil, imposed in retaliation for Bolsonaro’s conviction.

‘I don’t care’

Freitas accuses Lula of putting “ideology ahead of the economy, leaving Brazil exposed to fiscal risk with runaway spending that scared off investors.”

“There can be no social justice without fiscal responsibility,” he said.

Under his tenure, São Paulo has registered the country’s sharpest rise in police killings.

Deaths from police interventions jumped 61 percent between 2023 and 2024, according to the Brazilian Public Security Forum. The national average fell by 3 percent.

In 2024, two non-governmental organisations (NGOs) accused Freitas of tacitly tolerating police abuses in a submission to the UN Human Rights Council.

The governor’s response was blunt: “I don’t care.”