The six governors who form the Provincias Unidas group started their campaign this week with a gathering in Chubut Province, hosted by the local governor, Ignacio Torres. This is the first time in recent history that a critical mass of provincial governors has decided to join forces in national politics. The group includes two of the country’s largest provinces – Córdoba and Santa Fe – and in total represents one fifth of the country’s population.
The governors are working on the assumption that Milei will not have a second term, just like his two predecessors, former presidents Mauricio Macri and Alberto Fernández. The President made this alliance possible with his all-out confrontation politics, his inability to tell possible friend from sworn foe. To illustrate the case, the six come from at least four different parties: Martín Llaryora of Córdoba is a Peronist, Maximiliano Pullaro of Santa Fe, Carlos Sadir of Jujuy and Gustavo Valdés of Corrientes are from the centrist Unión Cívica Radical, Torres of Chubut is a member of Mauricio Macri’s PRO, and Claudio Vidal of Santa Cruz is from his own provincial party and has a union background.
It is important to follow how this group evolves because if the Milei administration continues to deteriorate, the rising question is what would come next. At the behest of his chief political advisor, Santiago Caputo, Milei is framing the October 26 election as polarisation between the ruling La Libertad Avanza – alias “progress” – and the Peronists, which would mean going backwards. But except for the election in Buenos Aires Province, the curtain-raiser the national government lost badly on September 7, the picture in most of the rest of the country’s 24 provinces does not reflect that dichotomy. Do Pullaro, Llaryora, or Torres represent the past of Argentina or its future?
The governors’ bet against polarisation is a difficult gambit: the public has proven to be extremely polarised in recent years and middle-of-the-road approaches have not been successful. Provincias Unidas will likely do well in the provinces it runs but it will struggle to get a foothold in key places like Buenos Aires City and Buenos Aires Province, which combined take up almost half of the country’s votes. Their candidates there, Martín Lousteau and Florencio Randazzo respectively, are not picking up ground in the polls. In the national count, the group should get at least 10 percent of the vote if it wants to become a serious player in the future.
If that happens, the group would also have to face a leadership issue. Pullaro and Torres have openly said that Provincias Unidas will have its own presidential candidate in 2027 and the odds point toward Juan Schiaretti, the former governor of Córdoba who is now running for Congress.
Schiaretti, 76, already ran for president in 2023 – and only got 6.7 percent of the vote. Except for Sadir at 67, the rest of the governors are younger, starting with Torres, aged just 37. Llaryora and Pullaro are in their early 50s, which seems like perfect presidential timing. Still, they can both run for re-election in their provinces if they want to – Pullaro just got a provincial constitutional amendment allowing that.
The ultimate test for Provincias Unidas on the road to 2027, however, is what to do with the governor of Buenos Aires Province, Axel Kicillof. He is emerging as a key contender for the Presidency and is gradually breaking the political (almost familial) ties he had with former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, dating back to the start of his political career 15 years ago. While he clearly stands to the left of most (all) of the governors in the centrist coalition, he has a proven record of major wins in Buenos Aires Province, a district without which nobody can become president of Argentina.
Kicillof, of course, has his own dilemma. He knows he stands to the left of the average Argentine voter and will need to shift to the centre to win over the majority he needs to reach the Casa Rosada. He can (and does) relate well to the centrist governors but an alliance in that direction will likely alienate the hard core of the Kirchnerite movement, which is in decline but still alive.
A centrist grouping might be the only viable option for Argentina if the economic and political picture continues to deteriorate. The Provincias Unidas experiment is for now little more than a PR drive with pretty branding, but it should get the credit for taking the effort of trying to find some common ground at a time when everybody seems to be just minding their own business, in politics and in life.
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