Simone Tebet leaves MDB for PSB to contest elections in São Paulo
The Minister of Planning, Simone Tebetagreed to affiliate with the PSB to contest the elections for São Paulo.
On March 12, Tebet announced that he would run for a Senate seat in São Paulo during the National Forum of State Planning Secretaries, in Campo Grande (MT). The change had been being planned in recent weeks by the minister and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Affiliated with the MDB for almost three decades, Tebet leaves the party to join vice-president Geraldo Alckmin’s party.
— São Paulo is crossing a river, it’s crossing a bridge, it’s where I did my master’s degree, where I had political projection — he said — Politics is a mission, and I’m going to very calmly contest an electoral process that I understand is very important for Brazil — said Tebet when participating in the event in Campo Grande.
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Tebet’s decision to run for the state had already been announced by GLOBO in January, when she agreed with the president that she would change her electoral domicile to run for office. Tebet stated that the electoral process in São Paulo “is very important for Brazil” and recalled that, in 2022, when he ran for president of the Republic, a good part of the votes he received were in the state.
— It’s been six months since I’ve been positively provoked that I need to play a role on behalf of the country. And when this reached me, I went to investigate the reason for this summons. And, to my pleasant surprise, I even saw that São Paulo had given me more than a third of the votes for president of the Republic. That’s where I had the most votes, that’s where I have the most emphasis,” he said.
The path for Tebet to be with Lula in 2026 necessarily included the departure of the MDB minister and the change of electoral domicile from Mato Grosso do Sul to São Paulo. Since 2022, the party has supported governor Tarcísio de Freitas in São Paulo. In 2024, Tarcísio was a decisive ally in the election of mayor Ricardo Nunes in the capital, an emedebist to whom Tebet is not close.
The state president of the MDB, Rodrigo Arena, organizes the party’s support for the governor’s re-election. In practice, Tebet would not be able to run for the Senate in São Paulo for the MDB with the support of Lula.
