SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on Tuesday that he will once again have his past rival and current Vice President Geraldo Alckmin as his running mate for his reelection bid.
Lula, an 80-year-old leftist, had been under pressure to pick a different running mate from a bigger right-wing party, but his loyalty to the former Sao Paulo state governor prevailed.
The 73-year-old Alckmin, a center-right politician who ran against Lula for the presidency in 2006 and lost, is also the government’s industry minister.
Brazil’s president said that Alckmin will leave his ministerial role to be eligible in accordance with the country’s electoral law.
“Our partner Alckmin will have to leave the Industry Ministry. He will have to leave because he will be candidate for vice president once again,” Lula said during a Cabinet meeting in the capital, Brasilia.
Brazil’s electoral law states that government ministers need to leave their positions in the Cabinet until April 4 if they are running for office in the October general election. Several other government ministers will also exit to bid for other positions.
Alckmin has conservative and right-leaning roots that served Lula well in his narrow victory against then President Jair Bolsonaro in 2022. This year, Lula is expected to face Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, one of the sons of his predecessor. Polls show the two in a dead heat race.
Dr. Alckmin, as many Brazilians call him, is a soft-spoken Catholic politician who governed Brazil’s wealthiest state three times. In 2006, he lost the presidency to Lula in a runoff by wide margins. In 2018, he started the campaign as the favorite to win and was later routed by outsider Bolsonaro in the first round. Bolsonaro then beat Workers’ Party candidate Fernando Haddad.
In 2022, Alckmin joined the Brazilian Socialist Party to run with Lula, leaving behind the center-right Brazilian Social Democracy Party he helped found three decades before.
During his time as vice president, Alckmin has been a key member of Lula’s administration in tariff discussions with the U.S. government and in the dealings that led to the conclusion of a deal between South American trade bloc Mercosur and the European Union.
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