Can Kicillof break the spell?

History goes that no Buenos Aires Province governor has ever subsequently been elected president of Argentina. Since the return of democracy in 1983, three have had a go, all Peronists: Antonio Cafiero could not even clinch the nomination, losing a primary to Carlos Menem in 1988; Eduardo Duhalde lost to Fernando De la Rúa in 1999; Daniel Scioli lost to Mauricio Macri in 2015.

Today, Axel Kicillof, the incumbent governor of Buenos Aires Province is the obvious challenger for Javier Milei in the likely event that the President seeks re-election in 2027. Too distant a future? Probably, but the political establishment is already onto it.

Milei and his strategists see this race in two legs. The first leg is played this year in the October midterm elections. La Libertad Avanza, the ruling party, is confident they will win the national count because they might be one of the few parties – if not the only one – that carries the same party colours in all 24 different elections that will renew half of the Lower House and a third of the Senate. The Casa Rosada’s most moderate estimates place the total votes at at least 35 percent; the more optimistic at near 50 percent. The truth should be somewhere in the middle, but there is still a long way to go until the elections, especially if Congress, as expected, suspends the August PASO primaries.

Behind the numbers, two races will stand out. In Buenos Aires City, the Milei candidates will face the Macri family; in Buenos Aires Province, it will be Kirchnerite muscle.

As discussed last week, former president Mauricio Macri has the political odds stacked against him. His best-case scenario this year is keeping some sort of control over his political stronghold, Buenos Aires City, currently run by his cousin Jorge Macri. If a Milei-backed candidate wins the most seats in October in the capital, the Macris could fear for 2027 and the future.

The ultimate battle will be, as it usually is, in Buenos Aires Province, home to 37 percent of the country’s population. The province has traditionally been a Peronist stronghold and is increasingly the last bastion of the Kirchner movement that dominated Argentine politics for almost two decades before the irruption of Milei.

Kicillof is the “natural” Peronist candidate for 2027. He is an economist (like Milei) and the same age as the President. But it’s the differences that stand out: they grew up in exactly opposite intellectual traditions, John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman; one believes in state intervention, the other in free market forces; one is married and has two children, the other is single (well, dating) and has four (or is it five?) dogs.

The last time the expression “natural candidate” was used was in the late 1990s, when Duhalde served that role for Carlos Menem, the Peronist leader who turned Argentina neoliberal. Duhalde lost (and Menem was happy about that), only to be appointed caretaker president by Congress two years later after De la Rúa’s dramatic resignation.

If the current political trajectory stands, Kicillof would face an uphill battle. He has the curse of a surname that starts with a K, which is exactly the initial most Argentines symbolically voted against in 2023, but his real curse is greater than that: the very people who should be pushing him to take the next step of his political career are now playing against him.

Kicillof faces problems on two flanks. One of them is friendly fire. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner holds a grudge against him because he decided not to follow her every order, which in the last electoral turn included declining his bid to run for an almost sure re-election as governor of Buenos Aires and instead aiming for the presidency and a likely defeat. The ex-president seemingly wanted the gubernatorial spot open for her son, Máximo Kirchner. He is the putative heir to the Kirchner throne, though the Argentine people would arguably never vote for him in a presidential race.

Meanwhile, Kicillof has emerged as the ideal punching bag for the Milei administration and the main ruling party gubernatorial hopefuls for 2027. The list includes the mayor of Tres de Febrero, Diego Valenzuela, formerly a member of Macri’s PRO party, and José Luis Espert, a vitriolic deputy whose main proposal these days is to “fill criminals with bullets” as security concerns in the province hit the national news.

Of all the people who have been in his position in the past and failed to win the highest prize, Kicillof has perhaps the toughest road ahead toward an eventual presidency. But Argentina has shown in recent years that "impossible" is not in the local political dictionary.