More to lose than to win

There’s something odd about these midterm elections, particularly in the most important districts in the country. For the first time in quite some time both Buenos Aires City and Province have scheduled their local elections on a different date from the national midterm, while the PASO primary system has mostly been abandoned throughout the country. 

While multiple provinces and districts have been voting on different dates for years, the trend accelerated during the 2023 electoral cycle as Peronist leaders throughout the provinces sought to distance themselves from the Alberto Fernández-Cristina Fernández de Kirchner tandem, with Sergio Massa leading the ticket. With both Buenos Aires City and Province finally jumping onboard the trend, the detachment is complete, giving the two most visible districts in the nation a supposedly local agenda – at least on paper. Eliminating the obligatory PASO primary system has fostered greater fragmentation in a political ecosystem that had already been blown up by the emergence of Javier Milei and his libertarian coalition, La Libertad Avanza. Nowhere is the split more explicit than in these two regions.

Tomorrow’s local election in the City has been dragged onto the national arena by President Milei and Mauricio Macri, the former president and current chair of PRO. Both of them have led the charge from the trenches as they battle over the future of Argentina’s right-leaning electorate. It hasn’t been pretty, with both sides lodging accusations of foul play at each other, from corruption to alleged behind-the-scenes pacts with Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Milei has brought one of his highest-profile figures into what is an inherently domestic political battleground with Presidential Spokesperson Manuel Adorni. But it is difficult to imagine that he would take his seat in the City legislature, resigning the popularity that his daily press conferences confer – and that the political strategy supposedly put together by Presidential Chief-of-Staff Karina Milei and controversial advisor Santiago Caputo would relinquish one of its major pieces for such a trivial bout. Indeed, the battle for the City has become existential for Milei and his libertarians, as a decisive victory over PRO would allow them to court the totality of the right-leaning spectrum without the need of intermediation from Macri.

Inside Macri’s bunker, things are different. They’ve catapulted national deputy Silvia Lospennato to lead the ticket for lack of a better alternative. According to analyst Roberto García in Perfil, Mauricio and cousin Jorge Macri, current City mayor, were rejected by Health Minister Fernán Quiros, former Transport Minister Guillermo Dietrich, and ex Buenos Aires Province ex-governor María Eugenia Vidal before settling on Lospennato. The former president and his cousin have put in the campaigning hours, desperate to avoid a humiliating outcome while trying to force the conversation in the Buenos Aires Province. PRO have seen some deserters jump ship and are looking to retain some level of autonomy in the region, where the Milei siblings would accept to join forces only if they ran under the LLA banner. The Macris want to impose their conditions.

The battle for first place is less interesting than the struggle between the Mileis and the Macris. A former member of the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR), Leandro Santoro leads the Peronist ticket and is looking for his first electoral win despite ample experience in a district that is traditionally anti-Peronist and particularly anti-Kirchnerite. To his side are the splinter cells of the rightists, led by libertarian Ramiro Marra and former City mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta. Both of them will siphon off votes from Lospennato and Adorni. It is hard to imagine a City legislature filled with some of the highest-profile national politicians in the country. Despite all its downfalls, the PASO system would’ve helped clean up some of this mess, in a local election that counts with 17 party slates, the majority of whose candidates are complete strangers to the electorate.

Fragmentation has also reached the Peronists in the province, in a remake of the Milei-Macri battle. Fernández de Kirchner sought to retain the centrality within the Peronist space, particularly in its bastion in the Conurbano ring of municipalities that encircle Buenos Aires City and compose the Buenos Aires metropolitan area (AMBA). That attempt has pitted her against her former protégé, provincial Governor Axel Kicillof, who has progressively sought to distance himself from Cristina as he seeks to build some sort of progressive alliance to confront Milei. Their falling out has led to petty bickering at the regional level, to the point where members of La Cámpora political organisation, led by Máximo Kirchner, joined forces with Sergio Massa’s Frente Renovador to reject Kicillof’s budget during several sessions. Ultimately, Fernández de Kirchner backed down and allowed her loyal forces to pass the budget. Yet she indicates that she will also run in a local election in an attempt to snipe Peronist votes that will guarantee that she retains some level of power. This, of course, would weaken Kicillof who is expected to face a united PRO-LLA front that has the potential to overtake him. The governor is trying to figure out the alchemy: how to distance himself from Kirchnerism, which he believes to be a losing horse, while keeping Cristina, her supporters and her votes within reach.

For decades, Argentina’s political ecosystem had been dominated by two major electoral coalitions that were particularly bad at governing, at least since Fernández de Kirchner’s second term. One was a pan-Peronist front that fused conservative provincial Justicialists with Buenos Aires progressives under the Kirchnerite brand. The other was Macri’s Cambiemos, later rebranded Juntos por el Cambio, which grouped his PRO with the UCR, which had territorial reach throughout the country, and Elisa ‘Lilita’ Carrió’s Coalición Cívica. Tensions were explicit, particularly during the Macri and Fernández-Fernández administrations. The emergence of Javier Milei came hand-in-hand with major tectonic movements within both coalitions, exposing fractures between hawks and doves that resulted in electoral failure in 2023 and ultimate breakdown.

Milei is trying to pick up the pieces, but he already faces his own internal fractures. The contentious ‘Santiaguito’ Caputo has faced off with Sister Karina, who follows the lead of the Menem clan. They have different political philosophies, where the advisor seeks alliances with local forces and the chief-of-staff prefers running with their own candidates. Regardless of who is right, it’s another indication of a potential breakdown of the “iron triangle” that has become the President's main decision-making mechanism. 

It remains to be seen whether they can smoothen the rough edges and continue to work together as a team or whether all hell will break loose. It probably depends on the outcomes of this electoral cycle.