Battle of the Broom

Right in the middle of Brazil's white-hot, off-year* election campaign, a shabby, ill-shaven politico stopped abruptly in the middle of a "give-'em-hell" speech. Reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled out a sandwich and began to munch it in full view of his audience. Then, with ostentatious frugality, he wrapped the crumby remainder in paper and carefully stowed it away again. He was vote-catching Janio Quadros, candidate for governor of Sao Paulo. Brazil's richest state.

Janio Quadros has mastered a wide repertory of such theatrical tricks. He snuffs out a cheap cigarette before beginning a speech, tucks the butt behind his ear, then lights it again when he is done talking. He calls himself "the poorest of Brazilian politicians because I am the most honest." In keeping with that role, he goes about clad in a brink-of-tears manner and threadbare, ill-fitting clothes.

Janio's gifted hamming has taken him a long way. Eight years ago he was a high-school history teacher. Last week, at 37, after a year and a half as the efficient mayor of the booming city of Sao Paulo, he won the governorship election.

One Weight for All. In the most important single race in Brazil's nationwide elections (TIME, Oct. 18), Underdog Quadros was up against ex-Governor Adhemar de Barros. Janio and Adhemar are both magnificently mustachioed, and Adhemar is almost as expert as Janio at platform histrionics, but there the resemblance ends. Adhemar, 53, multimillionaire proprietor of a well-oiled political machine, is expensively tailored, hearty of mien and exuberant of speech.

Candidate Barros campaigned with flamboyant confidence, proclaimed himself the next Brazilian President (by law, President Joao Cafe Filho cannot succeed himself), and offered a 1,000,000-cruzeiro ($55,000) reward to anyone who could prove him a thief. Taking a broom as his campaign's cleanup symbol, Quadros appealed to the downtrodden with such rabble-rousing slogans as "War on the Corrupt Rich!" It was a close race, undecided until last week; Janio's margin was a mere 18,304 votes out of nearly 2,000,000 cast. Promised Janio in his victory speech: "I will protect and defend the working class and the poor. There will be one weight and one measure for all."

Gloves for Garbagemen. Janio's triumph brought into startling prominence in Brazil an unpredictable personality who owes allegiance to no party but has never lost an election, who sometimes talks like a two-cruzeiro demagogue but insists that "all my intellectual formation is based on Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln." He began his political climb in 1946 by winning a seat in the Sao Paulo city council with the help of worshipful pupils and ex-pupils. From there he went on to the state legislature, where he sponsored a record 2,007 bills (60 passed, including one to provide free gloves for garbagemen). In 1953, still an independent, he ran for mayor of Sao Paulo, won in a two-to-one landslide. Adhemar de Barros, who had backed another candidate, brushed off Janio's mayoralty victory: "The people wanted a change ... A lamppost could have won."

As Adhemar learned to his sorrow last week, he wildly underestimated Janio's appeal to the discontented. Now that the appeal has been proved in a crucial statewide election, a lot of Brazilians--some with hope and some with fear--think that Janio, rather than Adhemar, is Sao Paulo's likeliest future candidate for President.

* I.e., for almost everything except President.

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