Social Development Minister Victoria Tolosa Paz has announced an ambitious run for governor of Buenos Aires Province, confirming she will compete in the ruling coalition’s primaries in the nation’s key electoral battleground.
Revealing her electoral ambitions, the government official said she will take on Governor Axel Kicillof in the PASO and challenge his bid for re-election.
Tolosa Paz, 49, will join a Frente de Todos ticket headed by Argentina’s ambassador to Brazil, Daniel Scioli, Peronism’s unsuccessful 2015 presidential candidate who is seeking another run at the Casa Rosada this time out.
"Scioli and I will go to the PASO [primaries], I want to play in Buenos Aires Province. I am going to compete, but it is not clear against whom – the only person who knows is [Vice-President] Cristina [Fernández de] Kirchner, because they [Kirchnerism] have not yet defined who the candidate is," revealed the minister in comments to a local radio station.
"We have an objective, we have constituted ourselves as a political force within Frente de Todos where Daniel Scioli and Victoria Tolosa Paz are going to go together to the PASO in the place that we have," confirmed the national official.
"If we manage to convince and win the hearts of our voters, we can have a very good election," she told Radio 10.
Despite confirmation of Tolosa Paz’s gubernatorial ambitions, she faces a daunting challenge at the ballot box in the form of Kicillof, the incumbent at government house in La Plata.
Kicillof, a close ally of Fernández de Kirchner, has been tipped for a potential presidential run, representing the Kichnerite wing of the ruling coalition, though he is expected by most analysts to seek re-election.
Tolosa Paz called on the other hopefuls to declare their intentions for the upcoming elections and talked up Scioli as a consensus candidate.
"Scioli is a broad, embracing and containing figure" who can attract voters to back the government’s ticket in October, declared the minister, who is close to President Alberto Fernández.
– TIMES/NA/PERFIL
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