Workers’ Party eyeing improbable comeback in São Paulo governor race

Despite winning the presidential election four times in a row from 2002 onward, the Workers’ Party has never managed to conquer the governor’s office of São Paulo, the country’s wealthiest and most populous state — it accounts for one-third of the national GDP and one-fifth of the Brazilian population.

For a good part of this year, the party hoped that it would be able to break that duck in 2022. Polls showed its own Fernando Haddad — a former education minister, São Paulo city mayor, and presidential candidate —  miles ahead of his two main conservative competitors.

Sitting Governor Rodrigo Garcia (who served as lieutenant until April of this year) was fighting to preserve the decades-long dominance of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) in the state, while President Jair Bolsonaro’s former Infrastructure Minister Tarcísio de Freitas lacked name recognition.

But when the first-round votes came in, the Workers’ Party was left frustrated once more. Despite polls giving Mr. Haddad a decent lead, Mr. Freitas ended up ahead — and by around 7 percentage points — setting up a head-to-head battle that mirrors the national dispute between President Bolsonaro and the Workers’ Party figurehead Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Quickly endorsed by the defeated Mr. Garcia, it appeared that Mr. Freitas would sail to victory in Sunday’s runoff. However, a series of campaign incidents mean that the race in Brazil’s richest state may not be as clear-cut as it appears.

Destroying evidence

On October 17, Mr. Freitas headed to São Paulo’s sprawling Paraisópolis favela for a campaign event. By all accounts, due to his position as representing Mr. Bolsonaro in the state, the former infrastructure minister was not to be welcomed by the Paraisópolis locals with open arms.

Just one day before, in the first debate of the runoff campaign, Mr. Bolsonaro ridiculed Lula for holding a massive...