Presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni will run for a seat in the Buenos Aires City legislature in the May 18 local elections. He will thus be the face of the La Libertad Avanza (LLA, for its Spanish acronym) campaign as it goes up against center-right party PRO, the government’s main ally in Congress, and Peronism. 

LLA made the announcement on social media together with a picture showing Adorni flanked by President Javier Milei and his sister, Presidential Secretary Karina Milei, standing in front of a chainsaw.

“With Manuel Adorni, we will take the chainsaw to Buenos Aires City,” read the post on X, which ended with the traditional “VLLC” initials, meaning “Long live freedom, damn it.” 

The candidate of the ruling party for the city lawmaker elections has been the object of speculation for some time. Although Adorni has been in the mix since the beginning, other names tossed around included current Deregulation Minister Federico Sturzennegger and Daniel Parisini, who posts on X under the moniker of Gordo Dan (Fat Dan) and is part of the administration’s communication team. 

According to Herald sister publication Ámbito, Adorni, whose current official position is Media and Communication Secretary, will run as the first name on the ticket. He will be followed by current Banco Nación director Solana Pelayo and Nicolás Pakgojz, who is the head of Argentina’s State Asset Management Agency (AABE, by its Spanish initials). 

What’s at stake in the Buenos Aires City elections

The May 18 election could be a turning point for PRO. The party created by former President Mauricio Macri, which has governed Buenos Aires City since 2007, could suffer its first major defeat. Current polls show Peronist candidate Leandro Santoro leading, with Adorni coming in second and the PRO candidate, who has yet to be officially announced, third. All parties have until midnight on Saturday to define who their candidates will be. 

In addition to Adorni and Santoro, other notable names set to compete in the local elections are former Buenos Aires City Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and ex-LLA member Ramiro Marra. 

For Larreta, this will be his return to politics after his presidential aspirations were cut short in the 2023 primary elections. Distanced from PRO, he will compete for a seat in the Legislature under a new alliance called Volvamos Buenos Aires (Let’s Return Buenos Aires). 

Marra, who was elected as a city lawmaker in 2021 and ran for mayor in 2023, was expelled from LLA last year after voting in favor of the city budget, a move the party said would result in an “unacceptable tax raise” and was “contrary to the ideals of Javier Milei.” He will now run for the UceDe, a traditional center-right political space Marra called the “first liberal party in Argentine history.”

With information from Ámbito