Lula prioritizes campaign in São Paulo, and PT directs ads to key cities in the state

Since June, the party has spent more than R$500,000 targeting ads on Meta networks, which owns Facebook and Instagram, to 25 cities. The contents publicize the federal government's works in the municipalities and many are narrated by the pre-candidate for the government, the former Minister of Finance Fernando Haddad.

São Paulo is the only state that has ads targeted by the party's national page. "The federal government has done a lot of things here and throughout the state, but they try to hide it from you", says Haddad in the content.

The capital received the largest investment, with more than R$122 thousand, followed by Campinas, Guarulhos and São Bernardo. The posts have already reached more than 43 million impressions and continue to be shown to the public.

According to federal deputy Jilmar Tatto (SP), cities that have universities or federal institutes will be prioritized, as they would have a public "more open to our proposals".

PT members also hope that the memory of moments when the PT occupied city halls will help the party, which has already had more than 70 mayors in the state. The state's prioritization is also shown in the choice of municipalities in São Paulo to host the first major events of the national campaign.

According to the original schedule, the PT convention to formalize Lula's candidacy would take place in Brasília, but it was scheduled for the state capital. This Saturday (25), the president is expected to participate, in Campinas, in the act of making Haddad's name official for the race for government.

The PT also considered launching Lula's campaign in the Northeast, but decided to hold it in São Bernardo do Campo, where he began his political career.

According to people close to Lula, the president himself is convinced that it was the decrease in Jair Bolsonaro's advantage in the state that led to victory in the 2022 elections and that is why he decided to focus on the region.

In 2018, PT candidate Fernando Haddad received 7.2 million votes in SP, while Jair Bolsonaro was chosen by 15.3 million São Paulo residents, that is, he registered more than double the votes.

In 2022, Bolsonaro's advantage over Lula in the state was 2.6 million. In total, Lula received 11.5 million votes and won in the capital, while Bolsonaro received 14.2 million and was the favorite in the interior.

"Our biggest challenge is to continue reducing the difference in Lula's vote in relation to Bolsonaro", explains Tatto.

"So the strategy is to set foot in São Paulo and compete for São Paulo, both for president and governor. The campaign will be carried out by combining Haddad and Lula. The agendas, the materials, the visuals, the promotion, everything will have a lot to do with both of them", he adds.

"The Northeast always appears in elections, it participated in all the elections of President Lula, of Dilma, and in the election in which Haddad was a candidate. The dispute to make up the difference is São Paulo", adds deputy and former minister of Agrarian Development Paulo Teixeira (PT).

Despite this, he highlights that Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro are also important states.

The offensive in São Paulo is also revealed in the PT ticket as a whole, which has important names on the political scene. Haddad, for example, will have former governor and former minister Márcio França (PSB) as his deputy.

For the Senate, two former ministers will run, Simone Tebet (PSB), from Planning, and Marina Silva (Rede), from the Environment. The two began their political careers in other states and changed their electoral domicile to São Paulo.

Each one will have its own focus. Alckmin and his wife, Lu Alckmin, along with Tebet, are the party's bets for the interior. France should prioritize Baixada Santista, which brings together cities such as Santos and Cubatão. Marina Silva should focus on winning the votes of evangelical women.

There is an effort to ensure Haddad's arrival in the second round, in an attempt to prevent governor Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans) from dedicating himself exclusively to Flávio Bolsonaro's (PL) campaign if elected in the first.

This month's Datafolha survey showed Tarcísio isolated in the lead, 16 points ahead of Haddad, in second place, and the dismantling of the PT platform in São Paulo could weaken Lula's campaign. Therefore, PT members say they are not working with this option and plan to run the campaign until November.

Within this effort, the party's Youth Secretary Julia Köpf highlights that there is also a strategy that values the party's young parliamentarians as spokespersons for the group, especially in the metropolitan region of São Paulo, which would be more progressive. Since the beginning of the year, Lula has been trying to rejuvenate the party's bench, which is the third with the highest average age in the Chamber of Deputies.

The disclosures of the federal government's actions in the state are also part of the strategy of attacking the opposing candidate, the current governor Tarcísio. According to PT members, the campaigns intend to highlight that part of the investments that have generated political credit for Tarcísio come from the Lula administration.

"For example, the SUS [Sistema Único de Saúde] Paulista table, there is no SUS Paulista, it's the federal government's SUS money, understand? It's for people to actually recognize what the Lula government's work is," said Köpf.

The so-called SUS Paulista Table is one of the governor's main bets on health. The program updates the amounts paid for procedures in the SUS to reduce the gap between real costs and what is passed on and has been related to the increase in the number of procedures.

The Ministry of Health disputes this assessment and says that the federal budget for the area is 77% higher than in 2022, reaching R$247.5 billion in 2026, the highest in history. According to the Lula government, this would be the reason for the increase in procedures in Brazilian states