Brazil Vote Veers into Unknown with Candidate's Death

The death in a plane crash of Socialist Party candidate Eduardo Campos has put an unpredictable spin on Brazil's presidential elections, opening the way for a popular environmentalist to challenge incumbent Dilma Rousseff.

The top two candidates, Rousseff and Social Democrat Aecio Neves, halted their campaigns as Brazil began a three-day period of national mourning for Campos, a 49-year-old former governor who had been running third in opinion polls when his jet crashed Wednesday en route to Sao Paulo.

But the political scene was far from quiet.

With the Socialists facing a 10-day deadline to name a new candidate or withdraw from the race, speculation buzzed on the implications for the October 5 first-round vote.

Campos's running mate, 56-year-old environmentalist Marina Silva, could radically shake up the race if she replaces him, leveraging her compelling personal story and broad-based appeal.

Born into a poor family of rubber tappers in the Amazon, Silva only learned to read and write at 16 years old, the start of a meteoric rise to become a figurehead of the country's environmental movement.

An evangelical Christian who appeals to both religious conservatives and the left, she surprised many pundits during the 2010 elections when she came in third with 19 percent of the vote running on the tiny Green Party's ticket.

A former environment minister who served under Rousseff's popular predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, she could pose an even bigger threat to the leading contenders than her late running mate.

Before she opted to join forces with the affable, politically connected Campos and his more-established PSB party in October 2013, opinion polls indicated she was the strongest contender to unseat Rousseff this year.

And an April poll found that if Silva were a candidate she would have been in second place with 27 percent of the vote, against 39 percent for Rousseff.

Campos, who had presented himself as the candidate of change after 20 years of government by Rousseff's Workers' Party (PT) and Neves's PSDB, was polling at eight percent before he died, against 38 percent for Rousseff and 22 percent for Neves.

Silva may be able to sell the Socialists' message even better than Campos, analysts said.

"Marina's presence in the race poses major challenges for the two main candidates. It creates a third option that could grow very rapidly," chief economist Andre Perfeito of Gradual Investimentos told Agence France Presse.

"Marina Silva is very charismatic. She is like Lula in a skirt, and that brings together many different sectors of Brazilian society," said political scientist Lucio Renno of the University of Brasilia.

But Silva's devout religious beliefs and late arrival make her a divisive figure for the PSB, which may not be able to agree on her as its candidate.

"Marina is an outsider in the Socialist party," said Ricardo Ribeiro, an analyst at MCM Consultores.

"The election has become even more unpredictable. If Marina Silva is a candidate it increases the possibility of a runoff (on October 26), in which either she or Neves would face Rousseff. And without Marina, the possibility increases of a first-round victory for the president," he added.

Andre Cesar, an analyst at consultancy Prospectiva, said the PSB doesn't have many options.

"The PSB is divided, but it doesn't have much choice. In politics, the important thing is to gain power, and she is the only alternative with a real chance," he said.

PSB leaders have said they will not immediately make a decision.

And Silva did not say whether she would be interested when she gave an emotional statement to journalists Wednesday expressing her shock and saying that she and Campos had fought together "for the hope of a better, more just world."

Cesar said that besides strategy questions, the news would also deeply change the tone of the campaign.

"Campos's death creates a new element, sad and emotional, in a campaign that had been very distant from voters," he said.

"Marina Silva's very possible choice as his replacement changes a lot of things, because a very competitive candidate would enter the game."