Flavio Bolsonaro to launch Brazil presidential bid amid campaign crises

Flavio Bolsonaro is set to formally launch his candidacy for Brazil’s October presidential election on Saturday after a series of political crises weakened his campaign.

The Liberal Party will officially name the 45-year-old senator as its candidate at a convention in Sao Paulo. Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei is due to attend as guest of honor.

Flavio Bolsonaro is seeking to succeed his father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, who named him as his political successor. Jair Bolsonaro is serving a 27-year prison sentence under house arrest for plotting a coup after losing Brazil’s 2022 election to leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Flavio Bolsonaro has promised to change Brazil and says he wants to free the country from crime, inflation, high taxes and Lula, who is seeking a fourth term. He said last week that Brazil was “on a plane without a pilot.”

He had been running neck-and-neck with Lula in polling before scandals involving a banker, a family dispute and tariffs imposed by the United States. A Datafolha survey published Friday showed Lula winning a possible runoff with 48 percent of votes to Flavio Bolsonaro’s 43 percent.

Marco Teixeira, a political science professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, said Flavio Bolsonaro was in a weakened moment and that rising rejection had created uncertainty about the viability of his candidacy.

One crisis began in May, when an audio recording showed Flavio Bolsonaro asking banker Daniel Vorcaro, who is accused in a multi-million-dollar fraud case, to finance a film about Jair Bolsonaro. Flavio Bolsonaro had denied contact with Vorcaro and, shortly before the recording was published, called the accusation a lie. He now says the relationship was limited to the film. On Thursday, a Supreme Court justice ordered an investigation into the film’s financing.

A second crisis involved Michelle Bolsonaro, the former first lady and Flavio Bolsonaro’s stepmother. She posted an Instagram video saying he had disrespected and mistreated her and had said she did not understand politics. The source report says Michelle Bolsonaro is important to the right-wing movement’s appeal among women and evangelical voters.

As divisions widened, Flavio Bolsonaro read out on social media a letter from Jair Bolsonaro urging unity. The report says this violated the terms of Jair Bolsonaro’s house arrest. A Supreme Court justice then blocked Flavio Bolsonaro from visiting his father until after the first round of voting. Flavio Bolsonaro later posted an apology to Michelle Bolsonaro, who accepted it.

Flavio Bolsonaro presents himself as a more moderate version of his father, while taking a hard line on crime. The report also says he echoed his father this week by raising debunked concerns about Brazil’s electronic voting system.

He has struggled to secure alliances with Brazil’s influential centrist bloc, with key parties saying they will remain neutral in the October 4 election.

Flavio Bolsonaro has also faced backlash after US President Donald Trump’s administration imposed two new sets of tariffs on Brazil this month. The Bolsonaro family supported earlier tariffs on Brazil that were introduced in response to the trial of Jair Bolsonaro, an ally of Trump. Those duties were partly reversed after talks between Brasilia and Washington.

Flavio Bolsonaro urged the Trump administration to postpone the new tariffs until after the election, saying they could give Lula a political victory, but the request was unsuccessful. Lula has made tensions with the United States a central campaign issue and has accused his rival of being a traitor and of putting political interests above economic interests.