ARGENTINA: PRO UNION'S MULTIMILLION DOLLAR CAMPAIGN

C O N F I D E N T I A L BUENOS AIRES 000722

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/22/2039
TAGS: PREL PGOV ECON AR
SUBJECT: ARGENTINA: PRO UNION'S MULTIMILLION DOLLAR CAMPAIGN

REF: A. BUENOS AIRES 0655

B. BUENOS AIRES 0698

Classified By: CDA Kelly for reasons 1.4 (b) & (d).


1. (C) Summary: With less than one week remaining before the
June 28 congressional elections, most polls continue to show
the Kirchner-allied Victory Front (FpV) and the Peronist
dissident slate, PRO Union, in a statistical dead heat in
this race's key electoral district, Buenos Aires province.
This cable focuses on the Peronist dissidents' campaign style
and is part of a series on the three main campaigns, which
includes reports on the campaigns of the FpV (ref A) and the
UCR-CC (septel). The PRO Union's lead candidate, Peronist
dissident Francisco De Narvaez, has launched a
multimillion-dollar campaign, using the latest in media
technology, to take on the FpV's slate led by former
President Nestor Kirchner. Comfortable in the limelight, De
Narvaez has largely sidelined the slate's second candidate,
fellow Peronist dissident Felipe Sola, in an effort to
distance the campaign from the Peronist party. De Narvaez
has campaigned primarily on improving public security and the
economy. He has also used new media technologies to reach
young voters and has a four percentage point lead over the
FPV among the under-40 crowd. Even if PRO Union loses, the
campaign has given De Narvaez greater name recognition and
sets the stage for him to run for the Buenos Aires
governorship in 2011. After the elections, the Peronist
party is widely expected to realign itself to reflect new
political realities. If De Narvaez performs well, he will be
a force to be reckoned with in the post-election political
realignment. End Summary.

BA Province Race Remains Tight
--------------


2. (C) With one week remaining before the June 28
congressional elections, most polls continue to show the
Kirchner-led Victory Front (FpV) and the Peronist dissident
slate, Pro Union, in a statistical dead heat in Buenos Aires
province. With 37% of the national vote, the province is
this race's key campaign battleground, and a must-win race
for former President Nestor Kirchner (NK) and his wife,
President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (CFK). According to
"La Nacion," four of five polling firms predict an FPV win in
the province. Long-time Kirchner pollster, Ricardo Rouvier,
unsurprisingly shows the FpV ticket, led by NK, beating the
PRO Union slate headed by national deputy Francisco De
Narvaez by the widest margin, or 9.2 percentage points.
Rouvier's poll shows 38.3% of those polled support the FPV
versus 29.1% for PRO Union. Analogias gives the FPV slate an
8-point advantage over PRO Union, with 36.4% of respondents
favoring the FPV and 28.3% favoring De Narvaez. Management
and Fit (MAF) gives 28.9% to the FPV versus 23.7% to PRO
Union, while Isonomia shows a tighter race, with the two
parties in a statistical dead heat (FPV 29.2% versus Pro
Union 26.1%).


3. (C) Poliarquia, which was commissioned by "La Nacion,"
shows De Narvaez leading the race. The survey gives the
multimillionaire a slight lead, taking 32.5% of the vote and
holding a 2.5 percentage point lead over NK. The poll also
showed that the number of people having a positive image of
De Narvaez has grown, and now stands at 42%. This is four
percentage points higher than Buenos Aires Governor Daniel
Scioli, the FPV's most popular official and NK's running
mate. Only 36% have a positive image of NK, and 43% have a
negative image, according to Poliarquia. De Narvaez also
appears to have broad-based support across all socio-economic
groups, while NK is struggling to obtain middle and upper
class support. The same poll shows De Narvaez doing well
among young voters and voters who have completed high school
and/or university studies. In contrast, Kirchner's strength
lies with those over 60, retired, and the uneducated (i.e.,
those who have only completed primary education). An
unpublished poll conducted June 11-18 by highly regarded
Ipsos - Mora y Araujo, with a margin of error of 2.8%, shows
35% of respondents intending to vote for De Narvaez's slate,
and only 30% for the NK-Scioli ticket. Although political
commentators still believe the race is too close to call,
contacts in the De Narvaez-Macri-Sola camp have told us that
they expect to lose by a few percentage points.

PRO-Union: A "Stormy" Alliance
--------------


4. (C) In February, Peronist dissidents Francisco De Narvaez
and Felipe Sola teamed up with Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio
Macri of Republican Proposal (PRO) to define a common slate
headed by De Narvaez and Sola. Local observers describe the
alliance as a "marriage of convenience" between the
center-right PRO, which has limited national reach outside of

its base in Buenos Aires City, and the Peronist dissidents.
According to press reports, negotiations to define the
slate's composition of candidates were arduous, as each camp
fought to get their picks on the lists. After the lists were
finalized, however, both Macri and Sola were caught off-guard
when in May De Narvaez presented to the Electoral Court lists
that only included his candidates in 20 of the province's 134
districts, according to a local political analyst whose firm
consults for Macri. As the deadline to submit candidate
slates had already passed when the political maneuver was
made public, Macri and Sola could do nothing but accept it.

Campaigning Multimillionaire Style
--------------


5. (C) De Narvaez appears to have spared no expense in his
campaign. With a ten-seat Cessna jet at his disposal, he is
able to visit the farthest corners of the vast province of
Buenos Aires, which covers more territory than the entire
nation of France. His office, a modern house in the upscale
and trendy neighborhood of Las Canitas, is staffed by 100
employees and equipped with the latest technology. His
office boasts a large flat screen television which displays a
digital map that denotes the location of the country's media
organizations. His staff also maintains an interactive
Internet site for reporting crimes in the province.


6. (C) The Civic Coalition and Radical alliance has
complained that such wealth gives De Narvaez an unfair
advantage and called on PRO Union to report their campaign
expenses. De Narvaez has publicly asserted that the costly
campaign has been all on his dime and that he will not report
his expenses until required by law. (Note: Electoral law
requires that parties submit reports on their estimated
expenses ten days prior to the elections. A final report of
actual campaign expenses is required 60 days after the
elections.) On June 18, in compliance with the electoral
law, his campaign reported that its to-date campaign costs
estimated 14.430 million pesos (approximately USD $3.8
million).

De Narvaez the Stage Hog
--------------


7. (C) De Narvaez has done little to share the limelight with
his ostensible running mate Sola. Local political
commentators have speculated that this may be because PRO
Union is seeking to deemphasize its ties to the Peronist
party. As a result, Sola and De Narvaez have appeared
together in very few campaign events, and Sola has been
absent from most campaign ads. In an effort to boost his
public profile, Sola appeared on June 15 on the wildly
popular political satire program, "Big Brother in Law" ("Gran
Cunado") where he joked about his lack of appearances in
campaign ads. In contrast, Macri, though not a candidate
himself, has appeared alongside both De Narvaez and PRO's
lead candidate in BA City, former vice-mayor Gabriela
Michetti, to inaugurate new public works.

Campaigning on Security and the Economy
--------------


8. (C) Pro Union's campaign has primarily focused on reducing
crime and more recently has emphasized the importance of
strengthening the local economy. De Narvaez's principal
campaign website touts a new vision for a safer and more
economically sound province. It promises a revamping of the
current system in the areas of security, justice, the
economy, health, social policies, and the environment and
highlights a sports program aimed at reducing drug use among
youth. During a meeting with the business community earlier
this month, De Narvaez asserted that restoring consumer and
investor confidence is his top economic priority. He noted
that a high percentage of Argentines believe Argentina will
be worse off in the future, and added "we cannot talk about
an egalitarian country when some individuals pay taxes and
others do not."

Employing the Fear Tactic
--------------


9. (C) De Narvaez has also begun to tap into voters' economic
concerns to sway them to vote for PRO Union. During a June
16 campaign act in the province's key coastal city Mar del
Plata, De Narvaez warned that an FpV victory would mean
greater nationalizations, attacks on private property and the
press, and a grab for personal bank deposits, arguing that
"the FpV will need money (as) Nestor Kirchner intends to
follow the Hugo Chavez model." At the same time, he has
stressed to voters that they should not waste their vote on
other opposition candidates, such as the Radical/Civic
Coalition, arguing that only a vote for his ticket will be
"useful
to defeat NK.

Pro-Union Airs Fears of Electoral Fraud
--------------


10. (C) PRO-Union campaign insiders have also publicly
expressed concern that, due to the neck-to-neck closeness of
the race, the ruling FpV will engage in electoral fraud to
prevent a PRO Union victory. De Narvaez has said that
anything less than a six-point lead (which none of the
published polls has given him yet) would create the
conditions that would encourage FpV partisans to attempt to
rig the election and succeed. During his June 5 dialogue
with the business sector, De Narvaez said: "we are going to
do everything to make sure your vote counts." These efforts
include extensive TV and on-line advertising to attract young
voters to serve as party monitors ("fiscales") on Election
Day to ensure there are sufficient ballots at polling
stations and observe the vote count by the election
authorities. One ad encourages people to volunteer on June
28 so the FpV "does not rob us of our votes." As a result of
these efforts, the PRO-Union claims they have registered more
than 12,000 party representatives in less than two months.


11. (C) The campaign is also distributing mass quantities of
PRO-Union paper ballots during campaign walks and asking
voters to bring the ballot with them to vote out of concern
that FpV supporters may remove Pro Union ballots from tables
on Election Day. (Note: During the 2007 presidential
elections, it was reported that opposition ballots were not
available at some polling stations, which the opposition
immediately denounced. Electoral authorities countered the
charges explaining that it is the responsibility of each
political party to ensure that its ballots are available in
sufficient quantities at each polling station.)

Press Strategy: The More Attention, the Better
-------------- --


12. (C) A media magnate, De Narvaez is clearly comfortable in
the limelight and uses media attention to his advantage. He
televises campaign ads from his office and is accompanied by
a small media team to his campaign acts, including one staff
member charged with immediately dispatching photos to the
press. One campaign operative estimated that De Narvaez
averaged six to seven radio programs per day earlier in the
campaign. Poloff found it striking to see the extensive
press attention devoted to the Pro Union's dialogue with
leading businesspersons on June 5. By comparison, Radical
and Civic Coalition's candidates received scant press
coverage when they met with the same group on June 11.


13. (C) De Narvaez also appears to have boosted his name
recognition due to "Gran Cunado's" flattering depiction of
him as a self-assured, wealthy candidate who laughs
frequently and distinctively. The show also appears to have
helped him build greater rapport with voters. During a
recent campaign walkthrough in Greater Buenos Aires, children
shouted "that's the man from TV!" as he approached. During
campaign rallies, he has made joking references to his catchy
phrases that have been made all the more popular by his Big
Brother-in-Law impersonator. (Note: De Narvaez's TV
doppelganger uses his campaign slogans "I am a common guy"
and "I have a security plan" to poke fun at the candidate's
penchant for speaking in sound-bites. Like the candidate
himself, however, the comic does not reveal the plan's
specifics.) The catch phrases appear to have caught on, with
one female supporter yelling "he is a common man!" just
moments before he was to address a campaign rally in a large
rural city in the province. His distinctive laugh has even
been made into a cell-phone ring-tone, according to press
reports.

Using New Media Technology to Target Youth
--------------


14. (C) Taking a page from President Obama's campaign
playbook, the PRO Union has sought to capture Argentina's
youth vote. Eight staff members are charged with updating De
Narvaez's campaign websites, YouTube videos and his profiles
on MySpace, Facebook, and Sonico, in addition to his Twitter
messages. The campaign's youth strategy appears to be
working -- 48.5% of 18-25 year olds favor Pro Union to the
FpV, and De Narvaez has a 15 percentage point lead over NK
among voters under 40, according to Poliarquia. It remains
to be seen, however, if De Narvaez's extensive use of new
media technology accounts for his edge among young voters,
and whether it will attract more undecided voters to his
camp.

To Some Voters: De Narvaez Means Change
--------------


15. (C) Although De Narvaez has been involved in politics,
directly or indirectly, for at least 15 years, he has
succeeded in portraying himself as an outsider. De Narvaez's
message of change appears to be resonating with voters, with
many saying "he is a breath of fresh air." He has sought to
differentiate himself from NK by presenting himself as a
friendly, approachable leader, open to dialogue and
consensus. Throughout the campaign, he has repeatedly called
on NK to participate in a debate, a challenge which has been
ignored by NK. The close race and De Narvaez's voter appeal
appears to have made NK nervous. NK has reportedly used
Argentina's Secretariat of Intelligence (SIDE) to smear De
Narvaez by trying to link him to ephedrine trafficking (ref
B),a strategy which has not met with much success. NK has
since backed away from publicly trying to link De Narvaez to
ephedrine. NK has since backed away from trying to smear De
Narvaez, but a last-minute surprise attack on his rival
cannot be ruled out. Indeed, Poloff recently noticed posters
in Buenos Aires City that appear to target undecided voters
and directs them to a website which displays numerous videos
making fun of De Narvaez and referencing his link to
ephedrine trafficking. Other recently posted posters feature
a photo of De Narvaez next to another of unpopular former
president Carlos Menem.

BIO NOTE
--------------


16. (C) The Colombian-born multimillionaire notes that he
learned business from his grandfather, whom he began working
for at the age of 17 in his supermarket chain, Casa Tia, and
served as the chain's director from 1989 until 1999. From
1999 to 2002, he dedicated himself to his financial and media
businesses: "La Rural" (a historic convention center next to
the Embassy which hosts the annual agricultural fair),
"America TV," the newspaper "Ambito Financiero", and the
radio channel "La Red." In 2001, he created the Southern
United Foundation, which joined more than 200 professionals
from different sectors to collaborate on government
administration issues. In 2002, De Narvaez joined the
Peronist party, which he has said "represents what I have
always believed."


17. (C) De Narvaez used his influential business connections
to launch into Argentine politics in 2005 when he
successfully ran for Congress under the Peronist banner as a
national deputy from Buenos Aires Province. In 2007, he was
simultaneously a national deputy candidate and a
gubernatorial candidate. Our contacts say that only days
before the election, De Narvaez received a judicial ruling
indicating that he could run for governor despite his foreign
birth. (He cannot, however, run for president, though rumors
of a planned post-election push to remove the constitutional
prohibition on foreign-born presidents abound.) Receiving a
little over one million votes, De Narvaez came in a
respectable third, behind the FpV's Daniel Scioli and the
Civic Coalition's current top congressional candidate in the
province, Margarita Stolbizer.


18. (C) Born in Colombia in 1953, De Narvaez moved with his
family to Buenos Aires at the age of three and became a
naturalized citizen in 1983 so he could vote for former
President Raul Alfonsin. De Narvaez has told the press that
his imitator on "Gran Cunado" accurately captures his
personality by revealing the importance he places on humor.
Despite this light-heartedness, the candidate has had his
dark days and has spoken openly in press interviews about his
attempted suicide in 1992 as a result of depression over his
first marriage's failure. De Narvaez has three children from
his first marriage, two from his second, and is expecting his
sixth child shortly after the elections.

Comment
--------------


19. (C) Even if the FpV comes in first place in Buenos Aires
province, De Narvaez has certainly given NK a run for his
money. The PRO-Union campaign and "the Gran Cunado" show
have given De Narvaez greater name recognition, setting the
stage for a likely run for the Buenos Aires Governorship in

2011. (Indeed, there is some speculation that De Narvaez may
even have his eyes set on the presidency, which would require
a constitutional amendment or a court ruling to set aside the
requirement to be born in Argentina.) A strong showing in
this race will give De Narvaez and the Peronist dissidents
the upper hand in wresting control of the Peronist party from
Nestor Kirchner, which in turn would provide De Narvaez the
electoral base and political machinery to support such a run.
The outcome of such a fight is unclear, however. No one
here believes NK will leave without a fight.



KELLY