National senator Alfredo Cornejo, allied with national opposition coalition Juntos por el Cambio (JxC), won Mendoza’s gubernatorial elections Sunday and will replace incumbent Rodolfo Suárez, from the same bloc. It will be Cornejo’s second term: he governed the province from 2015 to 2019.

The elections were key for JxC to both retain power in the province and show strength going into the October 22 presidential elections, after coming second nationally to Javier Milei’s La Libertad Avanza (LLA) in August’s primaries.

Cornejo’s coalition, Cambia Mendoza, won with 39.5% of the vote, with a 10-point advantage over Unión Mendocina’s Omar De Marchi (29.6%). Peronist candidate Omar Parisi, from Frente Elegí Mendoza, came third with 14.7%.

“I am honored to have been governor of the province and to be [elected] again by popular vote,” Cornejo said after the preliminary results were announced on Sunday night. “We will give it all for Mendoza to grow, develop and maintain this level of public services.”

Cornejo, who was joined by the Vice Governor elect Hebe Casado and JxC presidential candidate Patricia Bullrich in the campaign headquarters, called for Argentina to make “a safe and steady change, […] without ups and downs, without a quick return to populism.”

De Marchi is a National Deputy for JxC, as a part of the PRO party. However, he ran against Cornejo after breaking ties with the local coalition in April. This resulted in him losing JxC’s support for the elections and creating a new local coalition, which includes members of the Partido Libertario, a party linked to far-right presidential candidate Javier Milei. De Marchi even hinted that he supports Milei after taking a picture with a person in a lion costume, a symbol associated with Milei.

Milei won almost 45% of the vote in Mendoza in the national primaries.

De Marchi accepted his defeat and said that his coalition managed to get second place after “just 160 days of existence.”

Although JxC clinched governorships in several provinces this year, their presidential candidates received less support in the primaries: JxC only won in Corrientes, Entre Ríos, and Buenos Aires City for the primary presidential elections. The Mendoza provincial elections were the last before October 22.

LLA was the most voted coalition in the presidential primaries with 30% of the vote at a national level; JxC was second (28.2%) and UxP was third (27.2%). However, Bullrich has been slipping in the polls since then: Opina Argentina’s latest survey, for example, shows her coming third with 25%, after Milei (35%) and UxP’s Sergio Massa (29%).

—with information from Télam