The
2014 Brazilian presidential election was held in the shadow of the scandals engulfing President Antonio Palocci, who had been accused of several allegations of corruption and abuse of power. Palocci had wisely decided not to seek re-election instead of running and almost surely losing. Palocci's Brazilian Labour Party (PTB-
Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro) opted to run Governor Fernando Pimentel of Minas Gerais in an attempt to make a clean break with the Palocci administration. The Christian Social Democratic Party (PSDC-
Partido Social Democrata Cristão), the center-right alternative to the PTB, nominated Senator José Serra of São Paulo, who emerged after a vicious backroom struggle between PSDC factional leaders over their nominee.
As expected, Serra won a plurality of the vote in the first round, with the left-wing divided between Pimentel and perennial left-wing candidate Chico Mendes, who won nearly 20% of the popular vote, mostly from disenchanted Brazilians tired of the corruption that marred Brazil's economic success since the end of military rule in the 1980s. Pimentel's stellar record as governor, combined with being much closer to Mendes on most issues, resulted in most support naturally flowing to him in the second round. However, Serra and the PSDC did well in tying Pimentel to Palocci, proclaiming that if he were elected president, with a National Congress that would "begin to take corruption seriously", he would clean up the presidency.
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Despite his powerful appeal to Mendes supporters, Serra narrowly failed to win the runoff, helped in part by Pimentel's slick advertising campaign that appealed to both middle-class Brazilians and low-income Brazilians who had benefited from policies introduced by the two previous PTB presidents, Palocci and his immediate predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Elections for the National Congress, however, returned a majority for the PSDC and other parties unfriendly to the incoming administration and corruption investigations that had been set up for the Palocci administration were re-tooled to look into allegations of corruption in the Pimentel administration. Despite (valid) protests by Pimentel that the members of the National Congress who were spearheading the charge against him were also under investigation for corruption, investigators seem to recently have found pay dirt over issues of payments to businessmen during Pimentel's tenure as governor of Minas Gerais and it seems certain that the hostile National Congress will make a motion to impeach Pimentel ahead of the 2018 elections.