Brazil's far right surges as Flávio Bolsonaro courts voters in bellwether state

A banner bearing the face of Brazil's imprisoned former president caught the wind as his son stepped onto the tarmac in Juiz de Fora, a sprawling industrial city in the state of Minas Gerais. Flávio Bolsonaro, a far-right senator and the elder Bolsonaro's heir, had come to campaign in a place that will help determine who leads one of the world's largest democracies. "Brazil is rudderless," he told the crowd that had assembled to greet him. "Brazil needs a president – and that president is Flávio Bolsonaro."

With less than four weeks until the 4 October election, the race has tightened into a statistical dead heat. The incumbent leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Bolsonaro are running neck-and-neck in the polls, with recent momentum appearing to shift toward the challenger. The timing matters enormously. Flávio's father, Jair Bolsonaro, is serving a 27-year sentence for orchestrating a failed coup attempt after losing the 2022 election. A victory by his son could result in the former president's release – a prospect that animates his most devoted supporters. Those who turned out to welcome Flávio wore yellow football shirts and headbands reading "Lula out!" One man, José Caldeira, fell to his knees and pleaded with God to free Bolsonaro from house arrest. Another, Ulisses Lima, a 50-year-old cybersecurity specialist, spoke of Flávio as Brazil's salvation from "this socialist abyss."

Juiz de Fora carries symbolic weight for the Brazilian right. The city's military headquarters launched the 1964 coup that imposed two decades of authoritarian rule. Eight years earlier, on the eve of the 2018 election, Jair Bolsonaro was stabbed in the abdomen while campaigning here – an attack widely credited with cementing his victory. Now his son was retracing those steps, speaking from a sound truck emblazoned with the word "Jesus," wearing a bulletproof vest, at the very corner where his father had been knifed.

Flávio's platform, laid out to roaring supporters, sketched a hardline vision. He promised to pack Brazil's 11-member supreme court with five conservative judges opposed to abortion and drug legalization. He vowed zero-tolerance policing, lowering the age of criminal responsibility, and introducing chemical castration for rapists. Gun laws would be loosened. The crowd erupted. Dozens of phones captured every word.

Minas Gerais itself is the prize. Larger than France with 21 million people, it is Brazil's bellwether state – no presidential candidate has won the nation without winning here since democracy returned in the 1980s. In 2018, Jair Bolsonaro defeated Lula's candidate by more than 1.7 million votes. Four years later, Lula reclaimed the state by fewer than 50,000. Recent polling suggests Flávio believes he can restore his family's dominance there.

But the campaign also exposed deep fractures. Lennon César, a 28-year-old law student and leftist activist, confronted Bolsonaro's supporters with a warning rooted in lived experience. As a Black gay man, he had particular reason to fear a return to Bolsonaro-era governance, given the patriarch's documented hostility toward minorities. César credited Lula's social programs with enabling his own path to law school. "If today I'm studying for a law degree it's because one of Lula's government programmes allowed me to achieve that," he said. The prospect of a second Bolsonaro presidency, he warned, could "destroy it all." A leftwinger on a nearby balcony used a loudhailer to taunt the parade of supporters, jeering references to Donald Trump's efforts to help Bolsonaro escape punishment.

The Bolsonaro years – 2019 to 2022 – had left deep scars. Amazon destruction accelerated. Gun ownership surged. Hundreds of thousands died in a Covid outbreak the former president was accused of mishandling. His attacks on Brazil's electronic voting system and authoritarian rhetoric culminated in the 8 January 2023 riots in Brasília, which the supreme court later characterized as part of a plot to "annihilate" democracy itself.

Yet political analysts offered no certainty. Thomas Traumann, a political analyst and author, called the election "a coin flip" – close enough that an unexpected scandal or unforeseen event could shift the outcome either way. On Friday, as if on cue, it emerged that Flávio Bolsonaro himself was under police investigation for suspected corruption involving funding for a high-budget film about the 2018 stabbing attempt on his father. With less than a month remaining, Brazil remained suspended between two visions of its future, and Minas Gerais would help decide which one prevailed.