Argentina’s surprise front-runner works to broaden appeal before vote

But the tight race in October surprised even Macri’s advisers and reenergized his campaign. Down by just three percentage points in the first round, polls show Macri now leading by six to eight points.

“The results caused a political earthquake,” said Waldino Cleto Suarez — a political analyst and director of Lado B Consultores — who is close to the government. “The surprise has to do with the fact that those with split allegiances ended up voting against the government.”

Scioli, a former power-boat racing champion, sought to recapture those allegiances in the final days. He held his closing rally in La Matanza, a poor neighborhood with strong ties to the ruling Peronist party and the biggest district in the greater Buenos Aires area. He spoke amid waving blue-and-white flags in the Juan Domingo Peron Sports Center, which Fernández had inaugurated this year.

Scioli has cast Macri as a throwback capitalist in the neoliberal mode, a man who will raise taxes, cut subsidies, devalue the peso, privatize state-run companies, cave to the U.S. creditors who are demanding Argentina pay its debts and capitulate to the International Monetary Fund.

“The option is clear,” Scioli told the crowd in La Matanza on Thursday night. “The devil of savage capitalism” or “the founding base of Peronism that brings it into these new times.”

That message seemed to be resonating with some residents, who noted that the area had improved during the Kirchners’ dozen years in power. In the aftermath of the devastating financial crisis of 2001, Néstor Kirchner helped stabilize the country and won supporters with a program of social spending on the poor and jobless. Fernández succeeded her husband as president in 2007.

“There used to be no drinking water, no paved roads, no schools. Lots of people were unemployed,” said Maive Coria, a 27-year-old English teacher. “But now at least half of the people around me have a job, have a house, a car. Their children go to school. I believe that we have to continue this way.”

The Peronist hold on the Buenos Aires suburbs seems to have slipped over the years. Fernández’s controversial cabinet chief, Anibal Fernández, lost the race to be the new Buenos Aires governor to a young ally of Macri’s, Maria Eugenia Vidal. But Scioli has still pushed a message of continuity, warning that gains of the past decade will be lost if his opponent wins.

“I am sincerely afraid of a Macri victory,” Gerardo Guerrero, a 54-year-old shoe salesman and father of five, said at the Scioli rally. “Macri represents the rich.”

Macri’s team has countered that Scioli’s campaign amounts to fearmongering and that Macri wants to return Argentina to the fold of normal nations. As mayor of Buenos Aires for the past eight years, he has been credited with sprucing up Latin America’s most elegant capital, with new metrobus lanes, a new police force and investment in the city’s poorer south side. Marcos Peña, Macri’s chief campaign strategist and former mayoral staffer, said Macri had increased taxes on wealthier areas to pay for that investment.

“The idea that we’re only going to work for the rich is a childish caricature,” Peña said. “Our intention is not to show that we are right ideologically. We want to work so that people can lead better lives.”

Macri, a 56-year-old engineer from an Italian family that built an auto and construction empire, seeks a more pro-business climate. He sees Argentina drowning in a muck of economic problems, from high inflation and a large deficit to unreliable government statistics on a range of economic indicators, including poverty. He wants to push the country away from alliances with leftist Latin American governments such as Venezuela and settle creditor disputes with the United States and others, while making reforms that would attract foreign investment and spur economic growth.

Because of government “lies,” Macri said Thursday, “we don’t know what the reserves are, what is the value of the dollar . . . what is the reality about how many Argentines are in poverty.

“To the foreigners, I want to say, we will clarify things,” he added. “We will establish our currency. We will combat inflation. We will work together with everyone for an independent judicial system.”

One factor is where the votes for third-place finisher Sergio Massa will go in Sunday’s election. In the northern state of Jujuy, where Macri closed out his campaign, the ally-turned-opponent of Fernández had fared well, and Macri hoped to seize those swing votes while also reaching out to the poor and indigenous in the area along the Bolivian border. Residents who came out in support seemed to be motivated by weariness with the current government.

“The corruption, the impunity — each day it gets worse,” said David Lopez, a 53-year-old local government employee who showed up outside a hotel Macri was visiting. “People are looking for options that are outside of the government. Now that option is Macri.”

Caselli reported from Buenos Aires.

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