After the marriage with the journalist Enrique Sacco and a mini honeymoon in Mendoza, Mary Eugenia Vidal What may be the most intense month of the year began: on the agenda there is a tour of the interior of the country and the province of Buenos Aires prior to determining whether or not she will be a pre-candidate for president in 2023.
The decision of Mauricio Macri to ratify that he will not play gave him air. If the former president launched himself, the former governor was convinced to get off and accompany. But now she has her batteries charged: “She’s looking forward to it. today he wants to play although she is analyzing it at all times”, says one of her collaborators who accompanies her on the tour that began in Entre Ríos. And she adds:It’s that it’s the only place where you see. He has the experience of the province and has energy. She asked us not to visualize her in another role.”
Vidal will evaluate at the end of the month how he feels, he will analyze what is best for Together for Change and will look at polls. For now, she believes that he is capable of jumping the PRO gap between Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and Patricia Bullrich. She is the third in discord.
Air. On Saturday March 25, during his wedding, Vidal received news that gave new meaning to the campaign he had already scheduled. In a relaxed chat with Mauricio Macri, in which Sacco and Juliana Awada also participated, the former president told him that in the following hours, on Sunday morning, he would go out with a video on the networks confirming that he would not participate in the elections.
The former president had already given him indications that he would not play. Her confirmation was a relief for her: if she participated in it, her candidacy would have been meaningless. In fact, part of her team had started working under the same condition: if Macri took the plunge, they would come back to him. “I’m glad you did what you felt really ”, harangued him in the middle of the party.
From that moment, Vidal began to recharge energy to start her own career that will take her on a furious tour during April, which includes inland provinces such as Between Rios, Santa Fe and Cordoba. Each of these trips alternated with visits to the Conurbano and the deepest Buenos Aires. Her deadline is at the end of the month: there she will decide if she becomes a candidate or accompanies another leader.
For now, he moves with a small group of collaborators: Darío Nieto, Macri’s former secretary; María Laura Fragueiro, who organizes the agenda in the territory; Agustín Bavio, his press officer; Alejandro “Rabbit” Gómez, former official of the Province; plus a photographer and a community manager. They always move in airlines, without charter flights, and they ask the local PRO representatives to make vehicles available for the tours. An austere campaign.
“I set a deadline for myself. The closure of the list is June 24, but I think that within a month will be a reasonable time to make a decision,” he said in an interview on LN+. And he added about the inmate: “I am not going to run away from what is most important to me: that there is a serious plan and clear rules. Let people see us compete but, whoever wins, find us working together the next day”.
If the furious campaign in April leads her to make the decision not to participate, Vidal has a place to take refuge: Horacio Rodríguez Larreta was his mentor and that is why he is his favorite intern with Bullrich. In fact, the Buenos Aires head of government was the only one of the PRO candidates invited to his intimate wedding party, where there were less than a hundred people. “Horacio gave me my first public job in ’98, I’ve known him for 25 years. I have a personal bond and I did not make my list thinking about the political, ”he explained. And she added: “I respect Patricia a lot, but she doesn’t join me on a personal issue. I don’t care at all if not everyone that people expected was there, it was a wedding”.
In the larretismo they assure that beyond Vidal’s personal game“the relationship between them is intact”. “María Eugenia has a lot of people close to Horacio around her, so she always expects it. It would be disruptive for her to play somewhere other than with us, ”they add.
Vidal runs from behind the pairing that polarizes the PRO’s intern, but he thinks he can put up a fight. To those who doubt, he shows a survey by the consulting firm Aresco that placed her three points behind Larreta and seven points behind Bullrich in February, when he had not yet begun his most furious tour of the media and the interior. He has faith.
Bell. Beyond the sweetened moment that she lives intimately, she is willing to hit and be hit. The former governor understands that exposing herself to a candidacy is getting into the deepest mud of politics and she has already begun to travel that path.
Due to his management in the Province, he constantly adds crosses with Axel Kicillof. The last one, as a result of the assassination of the bus driver Daniel Barrientos that ended in a march in which the Minister of Security was attacked, Sergio Berni.
“It would be a great setback for the province (if Kicillof is re-elected). In these three years, the only thing he could show was criticism of me,” Vidal said of the governor. And he concluded: “Whoever gets robbed or who lost his job doesn’t care what Axel thinks of me.”
Later, he got into politics: “What Kicillof cannot explain is why I left 760 political posts and he has 1,800, who are not police officers or doctors. They are the Donda Victories of this life, which has a position so long and inexplicable that it cannot even be named”.
But the campaign also has room for setbacks. In fact, on her initial tour of the interior she already found her first escrache: it was when she arrived at the Autonomous University of Entre Ríos, in Paraná, where around twenty people waited for her at the door, despite the rain, to demonstrate in against your visit. “It is surprising that those who despised and underfunded education can now give a lecture on how essential it is for development,” said Lieutenant Governor Laura Stratta.
In Vidal’s team they downplay what happened: “There were few of them and they left before the master class began, where there was an auditorium full of about two hundred people,” they say. They are prepared for there to be resistance: all the territories that they will walk this month are governed by Peronism.
Containment. For the former governor, this defining moment finds her in a special place from a personal point of view. “I had to get divorced as soon as I started the governorship and move to a military base. It was difficult to fight and return home to be alone with your children, who also need a mother to take care of them. Your children cannot be your support, ”she recounted in an interview.
“I am going to turn 50 and at this age I am very happy”, he adds about the commitment to the new family. And as for the political sphere, she says: “Everything that happened to me was an apprenticeship to bring me to where I am. I learned from the successes, but more from the mistakes. People teach you a lot. When they vote for you, they don’t give you a blank check, and when they don’t vote for you, you made a mistake. Politics distances you from people, makes you indifferent to pain and I don’t want that to happen to me”.
Days before her marriage to Sacco, his parents celebrated 50 years together. “At the end of the day, that is what is important: the family. You can’t get that off the axis ”, he advises those who ask him about his current situation. Vidal will do everything possible to get on a candidacy, but if she is not convinced of the April tour, she will look for a new direction. The only thing she doesn’t want is to be rushed. When a provincial leader questions her, she automatically avoids him: “This is not the time for definitions,” she says. And she completes: “With the destroyed economy that we have, we better not talk about it today.”
