The current mayor of Porto Alegre, Sebastião Melo (MDB), aged 66, was re-elected this Sunday (27) for a second term in office after defeating candidate Maria do Rosário (PT) in the second round of elections. 2024 municipal elections.
Melo obtained 61.59% of the valid votes, against 38.41% for Maria do Rosário. He will govern Porto Alegre again between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2028.
In the first round, Melo was very close to being elected. He received 345,420 votes, equivalent to 49.72% of the valid votes. Maria do Rosário received 182,553 votes, equivalent to 26.28% of the valid votes.
Who is Sebastião Melo
Sebastião de Araújo Melo was born in Piracanjuba, in the interior of Goiás, on July 24, 1958. He moved to Porto Alegre in 1978.
He graduated in Law from the University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Unisinos), and began working as a lawyer in the 1980s. He was a state counselor at the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB), subsection of Rio Grande do Sul and secretary and counselor from the Rio Grande do Sul Lawyers Assistance Fund.
In the 1990s he joined the MDB and began his political career as a deputy councilor. In 2000 he was elected to the Porto Alegre City Council and held the position for three consecutive terms, from 2001 to 2012.
In 2013, he was elected vice-mayor of the capital of Rio Grande do Sul on the ticket headed by José Fortunati. In 2016, he ran in the elections for Mayor of Porto Alegre, went to the second round but was defeated by Nelson Marchezan Júnior.
In the 2018 elections, he was elected state deputy in Rio Grande do Sul.
In 2020, he ran again in the mayoral elections. He finished the first round with 31% of valid votes and went to the second round with deputy Manuela d’Ávila, from PCdoB. In the second round, Melo received more than 370 thousand votes and was elected with 54.63% of the valid votes.
As mayor of Porto Alegre, Melo fought the Covid-19 pandemic in the city by purchasing the antibiotic azithromycin, the dewormer ivermectin, and hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, medicines that had no proof of their effectiveness in combating the disease. The distribution was blocked by the courts. The mayor was resistant to the business closure measures imposed by the state government to combat the spread of the virus.
In the first half of 2024, Melo faced the tragedy of flooding caused by floods in Rio Grande do Sul in April and May, causing 182 deaths in the state and leaving thousands of people homeless.
In July, Melo won the support of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who nominated Army lieutenant colonel Betina Worm (PL) to be vice-president on the mayor’s ticket.
