Closing of lists in Corrientes: one by one, who are the main candidates for governor in the 2025 elections?

As scheduled, the deadline for registering candidates for the Corrientes provincial elections , which will be held in a month and a half, closes this Saturday at midnight. Both the provincial ruling party (Radicalism), La Libertad Avanza (LLA), and the Peronist parties have already defined their gubernatorial nominations.

Last May, current Governor Gustavo Valdés (UCR) decided to split the provincial elections and set the date for Sunday, August 31, less than two months before the national elections. Valdés' concern, according to various political circles in Corrientes, lies in his succession.

This Saturday, signs of a possible immediate successor were confirmed: his brother, Juan Pablo Valdés, will be running. Indeed, the ruling party Vamos Corrientes will field Pedro Braillard Poccard, the current number two in Corrientes politics, former governor, and head of the Popular Party of Corrientes (PPC), as its vice presidential candidate.

The names of the opposition candidates are also now known. La Libertad Avanza will run with its deputy, Lisandro Almirón, and Evelyn Karsten, secretary of the provincial Chamber of Deputies. A majority sector of Peronism outlined its alliance for the provincial elections and launched Limpiar Corrientes, a coalition of local branches of the Justicialist Party (PJ) and the Renewal Front (FR, Massismo), and nominated Martín Ascúa as its running mate.

Another party, Encuentro por Corrientes (ECO), did its part with a ticket headed by Ricardo Colombi, who has distanced himself from Valdés.

Valdés , 41, is the mayor of Ituzaingó, in the north of the province, representing the Radical Civic Union (UCR). He will compete under the banner of Vamos Corrientes, the political force of provincial governor Gustavo Valdés, his brother. His running mate will be Pedro Braillard Poccard (71), the vice governor.

Vamos Corrientes represents a reconfiguration (compared to 2021) of the alliances between the Radical Party and more than 25 other provincial parties. Among the most representative is the PPC, founded by Braillard Poccard, the former governor of Corrientes. In 1997, he became the youngest person to hold the top office and was removed from office by provincial legislators two years later. In 2015, he was elected national senator, and in 2021, the other Valdés, Gustavo, appointed him vice governor.

"The name Gustavo (Valdés) proposes is the one we'll all follow. Whoever he decides, we'll follow that direction," he had told the local press in April. Even then, there were suspicions about his brother's intentions to nominate him.

Claudio Lisandro Almirón (51), a lawyer and political science graduate, is currently a member of the Chamber of Deputies representing LLA. He is close to Karina Milei and Martín Menem. He is also an expert in Corrientes politics.

In 2007, he was elected to the constitutional convention to reform the Corrientes constitution. Years later, in 2021, he became a councilor in the city of Corrientes under the minority party, the "General San Martín" coalition, a position from which he spoke out against "what we know today as the ruling class." Two years later, he launched his candidacy for national deputy for Corrientes for La Libertad Avanza (The Freedom Advances Party).

"The (local) government has decided to take the easy route: political cruelty, misery, a dirty campaign, and one that lacks proposals. That's how some people conduct themselves in Corrientes politics. We don't plan to follow that path. Here we have legislators who come from a long political tradition who came to contribute to a new generation," he stated this Saturday, when his candidacy was officially announced, supported by that of Evelyn Karsten , current parliamentary secretary of the provincial Chamber of Deputies.

The former president visited him in June, even though the Supreme Court's verdict on the Highway Administration's conviction was still unknown. There, she—a leader of the national PJ party—anointed Martín "Tincho" Ascúa (46), the current mayor of Paso de los Libres (the third largest city in the province), as the Peronist candidate. It was earlier that month when Kirchner visited his city at a Justicialist Party event, and the mayor received public support after months of internal conflict and reorganization within the Corrientes PJ party.

"If you have the guts, run with Cristina at the polls, we'll beat you and shove the chainsaw up your ass. We'll be in Corrientes supporting her," Ascúa confronted Javier Milei before the Peronist militants of Paso de los Libres and surrounding areas. A lawyer and later professor at the National University of the Northeast (UNNE), Ascúa ran for mayor of his city in 2017 under a Peronist banner and won. He also won in 2021. During that process, he also participated in the normalization of the local Justicialist Party, which had been under intervention for six years.

This Saturday afternoon, it was an open secret that his partner would be César Lezcano, a leader of the Renewal Front (FR) in Corrientes and currently a provincial deputy. The signature: Clean Up Corrientes, the alliance between the PJ and the FR, between Kirchnerism and Massism.

Encuentro por Corrientes (ECO), the alliance through which Valdés became governor in 2021, has now confirmed its own candidates, following a disagreement with the outgoing governor. Horacio Ricardo Colombi (67), current provincial senator, and Martín Barrionuevo , a splinter of provincial Peronism, will run for the alliance in search of the governorship.

Colombi was mayor of Mercedes between 1991 and 1999, governor three times (2001-2005, 2009-2013, 2013-2017), and the first governor to be reelected consecutively in the history of Corrientes. In his second term, Braillard Proccard was his candidate for vice governor, succeeding his cousin Arturo Colombi, who served as governor between 2005 and 2009 and was supported, at the time, by Cristina Kirchner.

Since 2017, Colombi has served in the provincial senate and is currently serving his second term. From 2017 to 2019, he served as third vice president of the UCR (United Left of the People's Republic of China).

Barrionuevo, for his part, was one of those who, along with Ascúa, normalized the Corrientes PJ (Party of the People's Party) after years of intervention. However, in recent months he has expressed dissatisfaction with the leadership of the quintessential Peronist party in the coastal province and has moved forward with a coalition with Colombi. He is betting, according to local press reports, "on a differential in the Corrientes perspective."