By Luciana Magalhaes
SAO PAULO, Sept 28 (Reuters) - From the bare-walled, 12-square-meter cell where he was serving a 27-year sentence for a failed coup plot, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro passed his most prized asset to his eldest son: his blessing to follow in his political footsteps in 2026.
"Let's go, it's you," Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the main right-wing candidate in the October 4 presidential election, remembers his father telling him in late 2025, over the rattle of the cell's
air-conditioning unit.
The younger Bolsonaro immediately accepted the mission: "He was humiliated and convicted because the system did not want him in public life," he told Reuters last December, soon after announcing his candidacy for the presidency.
The two men now have a chance to exact revenge on the politicians, judges and special interests they blame for driving Jair Bolsonaro from public life and ending his far-right, populist makeover of Latin America's largest economy.
The 45-year-old senator is polling neck and neck with leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has long been one of the region's most powerful figures and is seeking a fourth non-consecutive term.
The strength of Bolsonaro's bid, and the loyalty of the right-wing electorate to the former president, have turned Brazil into a test case for a belief embraced by many on the left around the world: that prosecuting and imprisoning a populist leader can contain the movement he or she built.
Carlos Melo, a professor of politics at Sao Paulo's Insper institution, said that former President Bolsonaro may be the most vocal figurehead of a movement that has long existed in Brazil and worldwide.
"The far-right goes beyond Bolsonaro," he added.
'IT HAD TO BE A BOLSONARO'
The competitiveness of the younger Bolsonaro's bid for power came as a surprise to many.
Unlike his brothers, he had faced corruption allegations, including leading an alleged kickback scheme that prosecutors said benefited relatives of Adriano da Nobrega, a former police officer accused of heading a gang of hired killers.
Of the former president's three eldest sons, the senator was also the least combative, softening the edge that was central to his father's rise and presenting himself as a "more centered Bolsonaro."
The announcement of his candidacy rattled markets, with bankers alternating between high-level meetings and cautious distance for much of the campaign.
Other conservative parties were skeptical, too, with some right-wing candidates announcing their own bids for the presidency.
For months, Flavio Bolsonaro tried and failed to convince others to join his ticket, ultimately settling on a little-known lawmaker from his own Liberal Party as his running mate.
"There was an initial lack of communication, owing perhaps to Flavio's first presidential run," said conservative Senator Tereza Cristina, a prominent agribusiness leader who was prevented from accepting the role of Bolsonaro's running mate by her party's leadership.
Still, Liberal Party loyalists seemed confident of their choice.
"It had to be a Bolsonaro," Valdemar Costa Neto, the head of the Liberal Party, told Reuters.
GLOBAL CONSERVATIVE EMBRACE
Despite the initial sour welcome at home, Senator Bolsonaro's bid was quickly embraced by the global conservative movement, which is eager to see Brazil join the regional right-wing wave that has brought Argentina's Javier Milei, El Salvador's Nayib Bukele and Ecuador's Daniel Noboa to power.
Senator Bolsonaro has followed the same playbook as many of those Latin American right-wing populists, uniting conservative factions around Christian traditionalism, free-market economics, and a fierce hostility to the left.
He is pledging to cut taxes and embark on an aggressive fiscal adjustment to lower long-term borrowing costs in Brazil. The platform has pleased the business community and investors, though economists say the proposals are short on specifics.
"Flavio sees a broader global realignment at stake and wants to be part of it," said Paulo Kramer, a political scientist and former campaign adviser to Jair Bolsonaro.
With the help of his brother, Eduardo Bolsonaro, who was removed from his position as a member of the Brazilian Congress after he moved to the US, Flavio Bolsonaro managed at the end of May to get a meeting with US President Donald Trump, who described him as "a smart young man who loves his country, Brazil, very much!"
During his first term in the White House, Trump established a close political and personal friendship with Jair Bolsonaro. Flavio Bolsonaro's attempt to rekindle that alliance, however, has left many Brazilians cold.
His meeting with Trump was preceded by Washington's announcement of steep tariffs on Brazilian imports, giving Lula an opportunity to brand Flavio and Eduardo Bolsonaro as "traitors."
Polls showed Brazilians blamed the Bolsonaros more than Lula for the tariffs, which were imposed in July.
"I don't think President Trump has helped Flavio at all," said Thomas Shannon, who served as a U.S. ambassador to Brazil during the Obama administration. "I think that was more harmful to Flavio."
DARK HORSE
Having overcome the initial skepticism over his candidacy, Senator Bolsonaro's campaign faced its biggest blow in May, after an investigation revealed he had asked a disgraced banker, who was accused of leading a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme, for money to fund a Hollywood biopic of Jair Bolsonaro.
Production contracts outlined $12 million in transfers from a fund connected to the banker, Daniel Vorcaro, to a U.S. fund managed by an attorney representing Eduardo Bolsonaro.
After first denying involvement, Flavio Bolsonaro admitted that the banker had funded the movie, but maintained there was no wrongdoing, merely "a private sponsorship, with no strings attached."
The revelation, however, triggered swift backlash. The senator saw his support drop in polls and some of his allies turned openly critical. Romeu Zema, a businessman who is also running for the presidency, called it "a slap in the face."
Newly unsealed court records revealed that the Federal Police in July had opened an investigation into Flavio Bolsonaro for corruption, money laundering, and illicit capital flight linked to the movie project.
He dismissed the probe as a "political hit job" and has since recovered in the polls with less than two weeks to go before the first round of voting. A second round will be held on October 25 if no candidate wins a simple majority. If Bolsonaro wins, he would be sworn in some four years after thousands of supporters of his father rampaged through Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential offices, smashing windows, furniture and artwork in the worst attack on state institutions since Brazil's return to democracy in the 1980s.
The prospect of a Bolsonaro returning to the Planalto Palace in Brasilia where presidents carry out their duties is raising the possibility of fresh institutional clashes.
If elected, Flavio Bolsonaro would likely move quickly to undo two legal blows to his family: his father's house arrest in Brasilia and Eduardo Bolsonaro's conviction for coercion related to a U.S. lobbying campaign that prosecutors said sought to pressure Brazilian Supreme Court justices not to convict the former president.
Freeing his father is Flavio Bolsonaro's main goal, something the presidential candidate alluded to during an Independence Day rally earlier this month.
"I ask God for the opportunity to walk up the ramp of Planalto Palace next year alongside President Jair Messias Bolsonaro, so that he may place the presidential sash across my chest," he said.
(Reporting by Luciana Magalhaes; editing by Manuela Andreoni and Paul Simao)
