Battle royale

Javier Milei’s libertarian coalition seems to have recovered from a series of blows – now it’s back on the victory bandwagon after coming out on top in legislative elections held in Buenos Aires City. It didn’t matter that it was nothing more than a local election with record low turnout or that the President and his whole cabinet were personally involved in getting his high-profile spokesman, Manuel Adorni, elected to the CIty legislature (which is a very minor political role). For Mieli and his crew it was a decisive victory that has helped them recover their confidence and that feeling of invincibility that characterises La Libertad Avanza and its allies, particularly on social media. Not only did they manage to outmanoeuvre Mauricio Macri’s PRO on its traditional home turf, they also took first place, depriving Peronist representative Leandro Santoro of his first-ever win after several elections in CABA, as the district is formally known. While there are multiple reasons to want to put a cap on the level of euphoria around Adorni’s first electoral victory, at the end of the day it represented another head-to-head defeat for Macri against Milei. The former president must now find a way to remain politically relevant and avoid PRO getting fully gobbled up by LLA.

The mainstream argument is that the decision to separate the local and the national election, taken by City Mayor Jorge Macri, allowed LLA to “nationalise” the vote, ultimately favouring the libertarians. It’s not entirely clear whether that theory is correct when it comes to the match-up between Adorni and Silvia Lospennato, a national deputy with a solid congressional track record with little to no connection to the City electorate. It may have affected Santoro, the frontrunner according to most opinion polls ahead of the vote. A former UCR Radical currently representing Peronism, Santoro was securing solid polling numbers while antagonising with Mayor Macri, but was forced to switch his strategy to confront with the Milei administration, ultimately sliding into second spot while counting on no support from the “national” figures of the Partido Justicialista. Probably a good thing for him, as the presence of the likes of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner or Sergio Massa (not to mention Alberto Fernández) would’ve done more harm than good.

Another decisive force behind the libertarian win was Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, the former City mayor and presidential hopeful for the Juntos por el Cambio coalition led by PRO in 2023. He was brutally smacked down electorally by Patricia Bullrich during the PASO primaries two years ago, though Bullrich’s aggressive campaign ultimately left her out of the run-off between Milei and Massa in 2023. Macri was a strong supporter of her campaign,  after what he felt was a personal challenge by Rodríguez Larreta. The former president also quickly lent his support to the Milei administration, leaving his former protégé to fend for himself as libertarians, Bullrich and even Jorge Macri attacked him viciously. Rodríguez Larreta picked up the glove, toured the City noting it smelled like urine and took home eight percent of the vote. Adding those to Lospennato’s votes, together with Paula Olivetto (Coalición Cívica) and Lula Levy’s (UCR-Evolución) five percent, the former Juntos por el Cambio coalition would’ve been near the 29 percent mark – still not enough to beat Adorni’s theoretical total of nearly 33 percent (if we grant him libertarian Ramiro Marra’s meagre 2.6 percent), but not completely out of the game.

The results in CABA demonstrate once again that Argentina’s political ecosystem is deeply fragmented. Milei is trying to pick up the pieces in order to build his own structure. As star political advisor Jaime Durán Barba noted during a posterior analysis on Perfil’s special TV coverage, the Macris have isolated PRO to the point where it is alone, a secondary brand to Milei’s LLA. Having lost the firepower of the UCR and Coalición Cívica on the one hand and the hegemony of the “right” on the other, they could face extinction and replacement. As always, the question remains as to what level of integration with LLA will be tolerable. After an incredibly dirty campaign in the City, Macri has taken refuge in overseas travel and left supposed lieutenants Diego Santilli and Cristian Ritondo in charge of negotiations for a united front against a fragmented Peronism in Buenos Aires Province that could suffer a tough defeat. Santilli and Ritondo have been negotiating for months and the speculation is that they are closer to joining the ranks of the libertarians than remaining loyal to Macri’s PRO. Much like the “Acassuso pact” – where Macri and Bullrich offered their cooperation with the nascent Milei administration in exchange for some level of control, only for the Presdient to take what he wanted offering nothing in exchange – it seems reasonable to imagine that Macri’s limited post-defeat leverage will leave him with the short end of the stick.

It would be unwise to count him out though, as much as Milei and his “iron triangle” would like to. Macri has proven an able politician in the past, pulling off surprise victories and maintaining a level of public support that makes him a force to be reckoned with. Regardless, he will have to figure out how to deal with the expectation that he kneels before Milei, the President’s sister Karina, and political strategist Santiago Caputo ahead of the elections in Buenos Aires Province scheduled for September. And then come up with a fresh strategy for the national midterms in October, particularly in the City, where the rumour is that Bullrich will be competing for a Senate seat.

While they’ve managed to remain united in Congress, the pan-Peronist Unión por la Patria coalition is suffering an internal divide that could serve the election in the Buenos Aires Province to Milei. Governor Axel Kicillof has sought to take the reins of the Peronist movement in its traditional home. This has meant a power struggle with ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who has battled the governor through son Máximo and his La Cámpora political organisation. Frente Renovador leader Sergio Massa has joined the fray as he hasn’t given up on his dream of becoming President, joining forces with Máximo. Kicillof’s decision to split the elections was seen as a way to force Cristina’s hand on the one hand, while giving him some edge together with allies at the municipal level in order to repel the libertarian attack. If what happened in the City is replicated in the ring of municipalities that encircle CABA known as “Conurbano,” both Kicillof and Fernández de Kirchner could find themselves struggling in the face of a united LLA-PRO front.

Once again, it is important to differentiate local elections from the national midterms, which is when the real battle is played out. Milei is looking to consolidate his win in the City with a strong showing in Argentina’s most populous province in order to dominate the major power centres of the country. With greater legislative muscle and less reliance on circumstantial allies, his administration will be able to more effectively pursue its agenda of structural reforms and begin to set itself up for re-election if the economy fully recovers. Politically, Milei is the son of fragmentation. Now, he’s consolidating his forces thanks to the weakness of dispersed opponents.

All of this is occurring against an uncertain economic backdrop, where a strong peso/weak dollar policy is only favoring certain specific sectors. While GDP will rebound strongly this year, the recovery will be uneven and the impact on middle and lower classes will be tough, as consumption figures continue to demonstrate. Adorni’s victory showed a concentration of votes among well-off neighbourhoods, while Santoro found strength in poorer parts of the City. That would be a bad trend for Milei given his initial appeal across classes and geographies. For now, he’s in battle royale mode, trying to knock out all of his opponents to emerge as a hegemonic force.