Buenos Aires City Mayor Jorge Macri said that his district will hold separate elections for local authorities on July 6, 2025. This means that BA City residents will first go to the ballot box to choose local legislators and will have to vote again in the October midterms alongside the rest of the country to renew seats in Congress. 

“Most provinces in Argentina are fortunate enough that they are able to debate their own agenda, so that the citizenry knows what the local legislators think about their specific problems,” he stated. 

“We want the same for Buenos Aires City,” he added. The mayor listed a number of issues he considered to be priorities, such as debating whether the port or bus station Retiro should be managed by the city or continue to be under the oversight of the federal government. 

Macri made the announcement in a press conference at the city government headquarters on Friday in which he presented his 2025 agenda for the city. Dubbed “Buenos Aires, first,” the program has four key initiatives: electoral reform, lowering of taxes, institutional reform, and deepening of the city’s autonomy. 

Along those lines, the mayor also announced that he will call for extraordinary legislative sessions in order to eliminate the mandatory primaries known as PASO. He asked that this electoral reform also take place at the national level and disclosed that the Milei administration Chief of Staff Guillermo Francos agrees with his position. The federal government had already previously expressed interest in getting this reform done. 

“Doing this would save the country more than AR$200 billion (around US$200 million) that Argentines do not have,” Macri said. 

PRO and La Libertad Avanza tension behind the move?

Although Jorge Macri and newly appointed city government spokesperson Laura Alonso insisted that the decision to split the elections was merely meant to focus on local issues, there are also political reasons behind the move. 

While center-right party PRO and ruling coalition La Libertad Avanza (LLA) have talked about a possible electoral alliance for 2025, there is still nothing official. PRO has not lost an election in Buenos Aires City since 2005, and there is speculation that moving the election is a way of hedging and trying to maintain control over the district in case they have to compete against a candidate from LLA.

National Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, who was the PRO presidential candidate in last year’s election, criticized the decision on Thursday even before it was made official. 

“Argentines have to vote only once, all together. If you split elections, you spend twice as much and you have to campaign twice,” Bullrich said in an interview with Radio Mitre.

“It doesn’t make any sense.”