João Doria, the Governor of São Paulo state, has been a reliable political weathervane since he emerged on the political scene. Possessing no firm political convictions of his own, he always seems the first to sense the direction of where the political wind is blowing. Since 2016, he has been reliably gliding in the direction of antipetismo, the Brazilian term for anti-Workers Party (PT) sentiment, which took him to a landslide first-round victory in the city of São Paulo’s mayoral elections.
In 2018, further propelled by Jair Bolsonaro’s tailwind, he was elected governor, promoting a “Bolsodoria” platform to gobble...