Patricia Bullrich He did not get to hear who made the account, but the truth is that the coincidence caused him various sensations. The first was a deep laugh. Someone from his team, in full swing, had started doing the numbers and the calculation he gave her was exact. It is that, in addition to her, the twelve closest collaborators of hers were sitting at the table.
It was the same number of people that one afternoon in August 1988 had met Carlos Menem in the offices on Avenida Callao, the first to support him in what then seemed like a delirium: making the picturesque La Rioja president for the coming year. . That group of enthusiasts went down in political history as “the twelve apostles” of the “Turk”, those who were in the genesis of the process that culminated with ten years of Menemism in power.
There were also twelve people at Patricia Bullrich’s first presidential campaign meeting. That coincidence made her laugh, but it also caused her some vertigo, the intimate feeling she’s had for a long time. You have to understand that she was even more enthusiastic than Menem himself. The initial conclave of the former Security Minister was in March 2021, when there were more than two years to go before the next national elections. It is that this is the exact degree of faith that Bullrich has: she has been going to bed for a long time every night convinced that on December 10 she will have an important appointment in the National Congress.
Crusade. Although she has half a century of politics behind her, although she held some of the most important positions in the State in different governments, although she was the president of the main opposition party and although she is recognized as a political scientist, when Bullrich has to make a transcendental decision in his career does not do so by appealing to his experience or his knowledge. What she trusts the most is, by far, her own nose. That was the one that she told her, in early 2021, that there was something going on.
“I am going to be a candidate for President”, she told her smaller circle in that post-pandemic summer, in which she rested in the family field in Buenos Aires. Macri’s government had recently ended, she only had her “last salary” as a minister on her -as she said in a recent report in the newspaper Perfil-, the approval of Alberto Fernández was through the roof and that of his internal opponent, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, too. Those who heard that message did not laugh in her face just out of modesty: without equipment, weapons, money or support, reaching that competition with chances seemed almost like a joke. But Bullrich clung to her confidence, the one that has kept her alive in politics since she entered a Basic Unit of Peronism in the Supply at the age of 16 and began her long career. “There is something that is happening, people want a real change and I think I can represent that,” she repeated, given her doubts.
The end of that 2021 only increased fears. Larreta had managed to impose his candidates in the Federal Capital and in the province of Buenos Aires, both had won with very good results and all the polls placed him as the most likely successor to Fernández. The political moment seemed to indicate that moderation and dialogue had become fashionable, and friends and collaborators of Bullrich approached him with the same suggestion. “Patricia, I’m telling you this because I love you, you have to stop showing yourself to such an extreme, you’re going to be left screaming alone like crazy in a corner.”
The president of the PRO ended that year without having participated in those elections, a decision that she made even against the advice of her team that had recommended her to compete in the City and even encourage an intern. And not only that: the strategic flight of Mauricio Macri to Europe in the middle of the closing of the lists in Together for Change had been translated into the red circle as a political abandonment that he made to Bullrich, who until then appeared as his protégé.
2021, which had started with his promise to compete in the presidential elections in two years, could not end further from that hope he harbored. He was still without weapons or resources, and on top of him it seemed that even his own coalition had turned its back on him.
What changed, then, in this year and a half? How did she come to become, out of nowhere, a presidential candidate with serious chances? Bullrich appears today growing in all the polls -according to her numbers, at a rate of more than one point per month since last February-, and she transformed her electoral expectation into an absolute certainty: she is convinced that she She’s going to be the next President.
He looks in the mirror of the La Rioja caudillo, finds similarities like that of the “twelve apostles” and compares the tours he makes around the country with the “Menemobile”, the campaign collective that popularized “el Turco” in his first election. On his team’s cell phones, the photos of both moments are all the rage. And there is also the most important parallel of all: he believes he is Menem while his opponent Larreta would embody the role of Antonio Cafiero, the Peronist whom everyone believed to be Raúl Alfonsín’s sure successor and ended up losing the intern on time.
In any case, Bullrich has already managed to overcome, for this moment, some difficulties: the lack of structure -close to him they say that they have already raised 8 million dollars and that with that is enough for the entire campaign-, the lack of armed forces -he closed with Néstor Grindetti, mayor of Lanús, to be his candidate for Buenos Aires governor and they hope that the former manager of SOCMA will drag other of his peers behind him- and he was also able to dribble the scandal that occurred around his former campaign manager Gerardo Milman and his strange appearance in the investigation into the attack on Cristina Kirchner.
The weather seems to be changing near the former montonera. And she knows it.
Noise. “Who is Patricia Bullrich? What does she think about lithium? The question was asked by a US investment fund to one of the candidate’s most trusted collaborators. “La Piba”, as she was known in the 1990s, sent him to the northern country in mid-May to meet on her behalf with different businessmen, who consulted him on various topics but especially on probable investments. She takes it as a sign of the changing times. “Who is Patricia Bullrich” is a question that is beginning to be heard even in English.
They are signs that are going around. The former minister’s team, that of the “twelve apostles”, has now become one of several dozen, with terminals throughout the country. Mauricio Macri In fact, he sent several of his kidney collaborators: Hernán Lombardi, Laura Alonso, Dante Sica and Paula Bertol, to name just a few. That support could be a bear hug, however: the former president wants to appear as the one who blessed her, a product of his creation, while Bullrich plays the fine line of appearing as his closest ally but with the challenge of maintain an independent position.
The red circle also began to knock on his door. The bulk of what Bullrich raised for her campaign came from lunches with small business owners or ranchers, who would put up $100 a head to have a chair at a meal with her. But now some members of the famous “club of 20”, the group of largest businessmen in the country, appeared at her door. “Everyone is wondering the same thing. What if it’s her? Now you can see that they are beginning to take it very seriously, ”they say in her assembly.
challenges. Bullrich, however, still has several difficult stops. Although the feeling shared by the majority within the opposition is that the electoral chances of the Frente de Todos, with a serious economic crisis that does not seem to let up, are very few, there is still the challenge of the internal one.
In the larretismo they support the thesis that it will finally be “the armed” the one who will finish tipping the balance towards them on the day of the PASO. “Everything is fine with Patricia, she is growing in the polls, but who is going to take care of her votes on election day?” They ask themselves close to the Buenos Aires head of government. On that side they take note that almost all the heavyweights of the PRO at the national level are with Larreta, as is also the case with the bulk of the mayors of the Conurbano.
In bullrichism – where they repeat the slogan of “It’s not the ship, it’s the pilot”- They lower the price of this thesis. “At first they said that we were not going to show up because Horacio had 80 percent approval. Then it was that we did not arrive with the money. Now they no longer know what to invent and they say about the armed, they are lost”, they say. It will be, one way or another, a choice that will remain in the policy manuals: the “armed” versus “the caudilla”.
On August 13 the mystery will be solved, although until then there is a long way to go and there will surely be new chapters of an inmate that is beginning to be spicy. For example, only so far this month Bullrich first uploaded a video tribute to René Favaloro, which was taken as a wet ear in larretism: when the doctor committed suicide leaving a letter that evidenced the lack of state support for his institution, at the head of PAMI was the current head of government. Then Bullrich did something even more provocative. The day after the last meeting between the priests of the PRO -Macri, Larreta, María Eugenia Vidal and her-, which was organized with the explicit mission of lowering the decibels of the contest, the former minister went to Palermo to make a video with the “victims of insecurity” on Buenos Aires soil. If the famous doctor was already a Chicana, this was directly an open challenge. In his team they recognize him. “It is that from now on we are going to look for the Buenos Aires voter of the PRO, there Patricia has a lot to grow. And yes, she is going to go there to talk about her issue, about security, it is inevitable, ”they say.
The clashes with the head of government, then, can only escalate, which is a matter of concern for everyone in the opposition: they know that their voter is “tired” of the infighting and that if this deepens they can turn towards Javier Milei . The line is fine and can be cut.
It is that, assuming that Bullrich’s thesis is correct and he manages to be the most voted candidate within Together for Change, he will then have another challenge: that of not succumbing to the growth of Milei. A priori, it would seem that both share audiences, and that if the economic crisis worsens, the libertarian’s chances could grow. Bullrich takes it very seriously. During the last year she was the main promoter of an “operative flirtation” with the economist, to tempt him with the possibility of joining the coalition. Some bishops of the former minister even suggest that she even offered her the Ministry of Economy if she became President.
Bullrich, in fact, promised Macri that before the time came to open the polls he would “bring the head” of Milei, that he would end up adding him to the scheme.
That ultimately did not happen. That is why she already has a contingency plan ready: her specialists convinced her that there is a female audience between the ages of 16 and 25 who does not like the ruling party but is “afraid” of the figure of Milei. It is to this sector that she plans to head. The attention that she is giving to her Tik Tok channel points in this direction.
However, Bullrich does not seem to need this political gibberish, the arimetics of the polls or the pats on the back from businessmen and politicians to convince herself: her sense of smell tells her that she is going to be President. In fact, she has already started to do “casting” of possible ministerials. The first thing he asks in these interviews, true to his style, is whether those who want to occupy positions in his supposed government “are going to have courage”, and he asks them to send him a proposal for packages of laws to send to Congress the same December 11. There are some names already in the dance, such as Federico Pinedo, who is given as chancellor if she were to win.
“La Piba” has faith. She knows that the question “what if it’s her?” she is starting to make herself heard.
