The candidate for President of Union for the Homeland Sergio Massa tries to accommodate the board and, as of this Monday, order the chips to face the second stage of the campaign, with the aim of entering the ballotage and facing the far-right libertarian, Javier Milei, there. This was promised to the president of Brazil, Inacio Lula da Silva, last week. With that in mind, this Saturday the Minister of Economy had lunch with mayors of the first and third electoral section of the province of Buenos Aires in San Vicente, in which the governor also participated Axel Kicillofand on Friday will travel to Tucumán, where there would be a meeting with governors and the CGT to take the lead in the second stage of the campaign and to recover the second most important territory for Peronism in addition to the Buenos Aires suburbs: the great north. This Monday the communication and strategy teams will present the minister-candidate with the details of the new plan for the coming days.
The territorial strategy
During the lunch with mayors–at which, among others, were those of Pilar, Federico Achaval; that of Quilmes, Mayra Mendoza; that of Ituzaingó, Barefoot Alberto; the one from San Fernando, Juan Andreotti; also the Minister of the Interior and campaign manager at the national level, Eduardo «Wado» de Pedro and Axel’s chief adviser, carlos white— Massa spoke of his concern that in the PASO there were 70,000 municipal employees who did not go to vote in the Buenos Aires suburbs. A subject with which the minister insisted a lot in private during the last weeks.
Along these lines, they also talked about the lump sum that several mayors decided to pay, but others did not. The idea of the ruling party is to improve performance in the suburbs and that there is not a large number of ballot cut which was on August 13. «Neither back nor to the right, let’s keep moving forward»Kicillof said after the match; he also criticized the ability of Javier Milei and Patricia Bullrich to solve problems and ratified: «We need Sergio Massa as President». Several mayors did the same. Mayra Mendoza, for example, shared a photo of the meeting and said that «they shared the work agenda and articulated the projects for the municipalities.»
One of the novelties that the meeting in Tucumán will have, which will take place at the end of this week, will be an announcement: the former chief of staff, Juan Manzur, will join the national campaign «to contribute all his knowledge and territorial work», as they explained to this newspaper close to the minister. There, Massa plans to fully involve the governors, many of whom also refused to pay the fixed sum. The Buenos Aires suburbs and the Norte Grande were the two regions that gave the FdT the highest number of votes in the 2019 elections. They need that to happen again on October 22.
The communication strategy
The campaign teams that are working in the Miter bunker lowered the line that «We must not attack Milei or her voters»because that gives you more votes, but what you have to do is «bring the ideas of Milei to the present». Against the discourse according to which the ideas of the libertarian «are interesting», they propose disarming their arguments one by one. For example, when faced with proposals to arm young people, sell organs, close the markets with Brazil and China, or dollarize the economy, they will ask: «What would it be like to do that? Are mothers going to be calm knowing that their children are armed?» or that friends carry weapons? Does that work in the world? Are you going to be able to sell a cornea at 18? How would the lower middle class access a transplant? If trade with China and Brazil is closed, what will What will happen to the workers of the automobile companies of Córdoba and Pacheco or the olive producers of Catamarca who sell their production to Brazil?
In the networks, Massa has already begun to apply the slogan. The minister, for example, this weekend, shared Milei’s phrases and put: «Horror is that you want to allow the sale of organs. People’s lives are priceless.» On Sunday, meanwhile, he repeated the strategy again: he shared a note on X in which Milei said that «global warming is a lie», and wrote: «Horror is denying climate change, Milei. We know you don’t care destroy the planet or anyone’s life. I believe in taking care of the environment. For you everything can be sold, from a lung to the rivers». His partner Malena Galmariniwho is fully involved in the campaign and going to the Miter offices every day, also went up: «If you are so concerned about private property, I want to tell you that fires, droughts and floods destroy the property of Argentines and Argentina,» he said.
In parallel, the idea of the «strategists» -which continues to be led by the Catalan consultant Antoni Gutiérrez Rubí along with other members from abroad who joined- is «raise the attributes of Massa». «Value that Massa is going forward and that she grabbed a hot potato and stood up to the IMF; that it has teams and proposals,» they repeat. They will also use slogans such as «going forward versus going back», and will state that on issues, such as «security», Massa has experience from his management as mayor of Tigre. They are also going to reinforce the idea that «Massa takes care of the workers». «He believes that he gets out of the crisis with growth and opening markets, not closing them,» they underline and say that Massa «proposes a government of national unity with consensus as the path.» It will be necessary to see if these proposals seem sufficient to the voter frustrated with the FdT government. There is little more than a month to find out.