Córdoba: Juan Schiaretti puts his political capital to the test to reduce the foreseeable victory of Together for Change

In the province with the second highest number of votes, the Frente de Todos is heading to repeat a defeat this November 14. Nothing new: it will be a result similar to that of the last elections. The real competition is between two anti-Kirchnerist coalitions: Juntos por el Cambio, which obtained a resounding first place, and the provincial Peronism of Juan Schiaretti, under the label “We do for Córdoba”, who came second.

The curious thing about these constellations, with shared affinities but contradictory strategies, is that they don't have a “captive vote”. The local political dynamics, since "the crack" exists, functioned more as a kind of division of tasks. The Juan Schiaretti-Juan Manuel de la Sota tandem has held firm in the power of the governorship since 1998, while in the national elections, the Cambiemos-Juntos ballots for the Change sweep. Between these extremes, there are variations in results, changes in the composition of the benches and municipalities that change sign.

The 12 seats that are renewed this Sunday correspond to the three main actors: Together for Change (JxC) seeks to validate five deputies and two senators; We do for Córdoba (HxC), three deputies and the Frente de Todos (FdT), a deputy and a senator. What is certain, according to the results of the primaries, is that the seat of senator Carlos Caserio -which answers to the national government- will return to the hands of the Cordovan governor, after only gathering 10.87% of the votes. The Frente de Todos is shrinking, in the face of an emboldened JxC opposition that will seek to block the pro-government initiatives in the Senate.

In the PASO, the opposition alliance competed with four lists and obtained a cumulative support of 47.72 percent. In the internal dispute, the lists of the referent Civic Front (FC) prevailed. Luis Juez, for the category of senator and the radical leader Rodrigo de Loredo, backed by the president of the PRO, Patricia Bullrich. Although for now moderation prevails and Sunday's game is missing, the calculations of the leadership of Together for Change are directed at the 2023 gubernatorial bid.

The provincial ruling party obtained 24.41% of the votes last September 12, with the lists for senators of the national deputy and wife of Governor Juan Schiaretti, Alejandra Vigo< /b>, seconded by the Minister of Commerce, Industry and Mining, Eduardo Accastello. In the Deputies category, the provincial legislator Natalia de la Sota, daughter of the deceased former president, was promoted, accompanied by the mayor of the city of San Francisco, Ignacio García.

The electoral campaign of the Cordovan duo had been ambitious, with the inclusion of an anti-Peronist rap and the slogan “Ellas” as a guide. The strategy, of leading the payrolls by women, is something unusual in midterm elections, especially for a provincial force that does not have feminism as one of its strengths.

However, after the electoral setback, the ruling party of Hacemos por Córdoba decided to return to what was known. Juan Schiaretti decided to “put the campaign on his shoulder”, put his political capital to the test, and since then he has led a dozen events in the main cities of Córdoba, accompanying the candidates. “He took center stage with political initiative. You had to fight in the crack,” one of his close collaborators told this Infobae . The governor exceeds the positive image above 60 points, so he maintains the capacity to attract more votes.

Hence the renewed confrontational discourse of Juan Schiaretti, despite the coexistence and political dialogue that he maintained these two years with the national government, and the failed attempts of Alberto Fernández to add him to the ruling party. In recent months, Schiaretti once again presented himself as the leader of a provincial "Cordoba party", and hardened his message, pointing to discrimination and inequality between "the port" and the interior of the country , in terms of subsidies to rates and public services. And he took aim, in a veiled manner, at the leaders of Juntos por el Cambio who came to support local candidates, such as the head of the Buenos Aires government, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta.

“There are no porteños here. I have seen that in the advertisements of other forces, a bit of the face of a candidate and that of a Buenos Aires appear, and so on. And the porteños don't talk about this topic. The porteños remain very quiet because they do not want to talk about the fact that they have the cheapest light, the cheapest transport ticket and that they have it thanks to the fact that the interior and Córdoba provide it”, he stated in one of his interventions.

Faithful to the program of part of his electoral base, always related to the agricultural sector and local cooperatives, Schiaretti promoted in the second stage of the campaign an agenda with proposals that the national ruling party usually avoids, such as fewer restrictions on production, such as "the gradual elimination of withholdings" or the transfer of subsidies to public services in the metropolitan area (AMBA).

Schiaretti did not have to do much to revive the old antinomy between the federal republic and unitarism. In recent days, in the framework of a party rally with 150 Cordoba leaders of the Frente de Todos at the Kirchner Cultural Center, Alberto Fernández collaborated with confusing statements, when he said that Córdoba was a “hostile territory” to his strength and that "once and for all he had to integrate into the country." The governor capitalized on the comment with strong criticism, and complicated the campaign for the secretary of Public Works, the candidate for deputy Martín Gill, who still has a chance to enter Congress. Without much success, the Government tried to reverse the barrage, highlighting the three hundred works underway in the province, but within the Frente de Todos the prevailing feeling is that defeat has been at stake for a long time.

For the rest of the competing parties and coalitions in the district, winning a national seat would be a miracle. But they can still get provincial and council seats.

The Left and Workers' Unity Front (FIT-U), which had won fourth place in the PASO with 4.2%, has Laura Vilches on its list of senators and Liliana for deputies Oliver. They are followed by the Córdoba Neighborhood Meeting, with 3.46%, which postulates councilor Juan Pablo Quinteros and former provincial legislator Aurelio García Elorrio as candidates. Finally, there is the Federal Popular Union (UPF) with 2.12%, with Agustín Spaccesi and Jorge Scala; and the libertarians of La Libertad Avanza, with 1.59 percent, headed by the ballots of María Eugenia Gordillo and Rubén Peteta.

All eyes will be on the margins that reach “Cordobesismo” -now “schiarettismo”- and Together for Change, when they return to compete for the anti-Kirchnerist leadership in the province, but until now they have functioned alternately. Both forces managed to be interpreters of the needs and the Cordovan idiosyncrasy, without each abandoning their national projections.

Will that set of complementary pairs start to change? Schiarretti not only needs to preserve parliamentary seats, to strengthen his bargaining power in Congress, but also because in the future he, like other Peronist governors without re-election, will try to assume a national role in 2023. In any case , the answers will be developed from today. The tragic death of ex-governor de la Sota in a traffic accident, and the impossibility of re-election for Schiaretti, implies a forced replacement in leadership. In the Cordovan ruling party, however, they trust that the defeats are part of the electoral routine that is renewed in the midterm elections.

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