Ronaldo Caiado’s planned presidential ticket with Gilberto Kassab may enter Brazil’s 2026 race without unified backing from their own Social Democratic Party (PSD) in several decisive states, according to single-source reporting from CNN Brasil.
Caiado, a former governor of Goiás, announced on July 1 that Kassab, the PSD’s national president, would be his running mate. But the party’s state-level alliances in São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia point toward rival presidential campaigns.
State Machines Split
In São Paulo, Brazil’s largest electoral college, the PSD is expected to support Governor Tarcísio de Freitas of Republicanos in his reelection bid. Tarcísio, a former minister under ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, has said he will back Senator Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party (PL), the candidate indicated by his father.
Kassab defended the São Paulo arrangement despite the lack of reciprocity. He said Tarcísio’s reelection was important for both Brazil and São Paulo, while acknowledging that the governor’s presidential candidate “is Flávio Bolsonaro, not Caiado.”
Tarcísio has also argued that Brazil’s political polarization leaves little room for regional figures to emerge nationally. In the same interview cited by CNN Brasil, he said his candidate would be “Bolsonaro, or whoever Bolsonaro indicates,” and that Flávio Bolsonaro had already been chosen.
Minas and Rio
In Minas Gerais, Brazil’s second-largest electoral college, the PSD has Governor Mateus Simões as its reelection candidate. Simões, however, has said he will support Romeu Zema of Novo, the former governor under whom he served as lieutenant governor after their 2022 victory.
Simões told CNN Brasil that his choice reflected “coherence and loyalty” and pointed to Zema’s fiscal policy in Minas Gerais as a model he believes could benefit Brazil. Cássio Soares, the PSD’s state chairman in Minas Gerais, described the arrangement as a prior, balanced agreement and said party members would be free to support their preferred presidential candidate.
Soares himself said he would support Caiado and Kassab, reaffirming his commitment to their national campaign. The statement illustrates the PSD’s attempt to preserve a national candidacy while allowing state leaders to protect local coalitions.
In Rio de Janeiro, the PSD is set to run former Rio mayor Eduardo Paes for governor. Paes is expected to support President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party (PT), Brazil’s main center-left party, as he did in the 2024 municipal elections.
Bahia Backs Lula
Kassab told CNN Brasil that the party should understand Paes’s local circumstances, noting that his state campaign includes parties and leaders who are not aligned with Caiado. The PT’s Rio de Janeiro branch had already formalized its support for Paes’s gubernatorial bid in April.
In Bahia, Senator Otto Alencar, the PSD’s state president, appeared alongside Lula at a hospital inauguration in Alagoinhas and said the state party would move with the president regardless of the national ticket launched by the PSD.
The PT is preparing an all-party ticket in Bahia, with Governor Jerônimo Rodrigues running for reelection and Rui Costa and Jaques Wagner seeking the state’s two open Senate seats. Alencar told Lula he had “a companion, a friend at all hours.”
Kassab rejected the idea that such state alliances amount to opportunism or reveal an internal party crisis. He said the PSD is a party that lives “in harmony” and argued that local leaders are responding to state-level political circumstances rather than acting out of convenience.