Flávio Bolsonaro watched last year as his father was sentenced to 27 years in prison for trying to stage a coup after losing Brazil’s last presidential election.
His father, the former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, was barred from ever returning to politics.
The younger Mr. Bolsonaro took up the mantle. Then scandal threatened to derail his own presidential hopes after he was accused of raising funds for a biopic about his father from a disgraced banker at the center of a huge corruption scheme.
But Mr. Bolsonaro was able to rebound spectacularly, and on Sunday night he celebrated at a raucous election night party, following a surprisingly strong showing that put him on the path to becoming the president of Latin America’s biggest country.
“Deep down, people were voting for a legacy,” said Camila Rocha, a political scientist who studies the Brazilian right. “Because they believe that, if Flávio were to be elected, the one governing would be Jair.”
The younger Mr. Bolsonaro, 45, fell short of the votes needed for an outright victory, but appeared on his way to ousting President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a runoff later this month.
Mr. Bolsonaro earned more votes than Mr. Lula and is now likely to win many of the ballots cast for other right-wing candidates eliminated in the first round.
And the presidential hopeful wasn’t the only Bolsonaro who had a good Election Day. Four other Bolsonaros also won federal offices, riding a potent right-wing wave sweeping the country.
Their triumphs cement the Bolsonaro’s as the dominant force within Brazil’s right and could make the country the eighth Latin American nation to elect a conservative president in the last 18 months.
President Trump was quick to celebrate Mr. Bolsonaro’s performance, although he cautioned that the second round would be tight.
“It’s a big victory,” he told reporters on Monday. “Close — but a very big victory.”
The vote marked an unexpected turnaround for the Bolsonaros after the elder Mr. Bolsonaro tried to subvert democracy and inspired thousands of supporters to storm Brazil’s halls of power, in an episode echoing the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The presidency could now grant Mr. Bolsonaro and his family new, sweeping powers to rewrite Brazil’s history and reshape its future in profound ways. If elected, Mr. Bolsonaro has promised to seek amnesty for his father and the rioters, as well as impeach the Supreme Court justices who jailed them.
Mr. Bolsonaro may also try to reverse a decision by the court to convict his brother, Eduardo, of interfering in their father’s coup trial by lobbying Mr. Trump to pressure Brazil to drop the case.
With a deeply conservative legislature stacked with members of his political party, including his relatives, these goals may now be far easier to achieve for Mr. Bolsonaro.
The Bolsonaro family’s comeback mirrors the enduring hold of other powerful political dynasties around the world, including the Marcoses in the Philippines, the Sharifs in Pakistan, the Fujimoris in Peru, and the Kirchners in Argentina.
In Brazil, like elsewhere, that dynasty began with a charismatic patriarch with populist appeal.
When Jair Bolsonaro, 71, waded into presidential politics in 2018, he succeeded in tapping into deep anger among many Brazilians over endemic corruption gripping the nation’s political class. Though he had spent nearly three decades as a minor lawmaker, the former army captain succeeded in casting himself as a political outsider.
Modeling himself after Mr. Trump, he railed against “woke” ideology and offended women and minorities. Promising a drastic political overhaul, he vowed to root out graft, crush criminals and restore family values.
In a deeply conservative nation disillusioned with politics, his take-no-prisoners message found an enthusiastic audience.
Brazilians were less keen on Mr. Bolsonaro’s family, distrustful of apparent links between his sons and corrupt or criminal groups. Family drama, mostly between Mr. Bolsonaro’s sons and Michelle Bolsonaro, his current and third wife, has also sullied their image.
In one episode that transfixed the nation, Ms. Bolsonaro, 44, a popular figure among evangelical women, accused Flávio Bolsonaro of disrespecting her in a biting 27-minute video posted on social media, damaging Mr. Bolsonaro’s candidacy. The two eventually made up in an effort to project unity.
Yet on Sunday, millions of Brazilians appeared to set aside those reservations. Beside nearly handing Flávio Bolsonaro a victory, voters also elected two of his brothers, his stepmother and an uncle in races for the nation’s legislative branches.
“Yes, it’s this whole family of politicians,” said Ms. Rocha. “But the one who’s in charge, in people’s eyes, is the father. That’s who they trust with their vote.”
With the elder Mr. Bolsonaro out of politics, his supporters transferred to Flávio Bolsonaro their faith that he would continue his father’s political agenda. Mr. Bolsonaro has reassured his supporters that he plans to model his government after that of his father.
“Jair Bolsonaro triggered ‘bolsonarismo,’” said Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and director of the Laboratory for the Study of the Far Right. “And he’s still the electoral glue.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Bolsonaro lamented a court order barring him from visiting his father, claiming it was political interference aimed at keeping him away from his “political mentor.’’
Instead of relying on a party’s political machine, the Bolsonaros are building their movement through their family brand, Mr. Kaltwasser said “They have a long-term ideological project. And they are ensuring it endures over time.”
In a nation where many voters have long rejected party affiliation, this may hold the key to a future beyond the movement’s patriarch. Mr. Bolsonaro, who is serving his sentence at home because of poor health, has been hospitalized numerous times with serious ailments that he attributes to a stabbing attack on the campaign trail in 2018.
At the same time, the opposition appears weaker than ever. The leftist political party founded by Mr. Lula succeeded in rallying voters around him for years, leaning on his charisma and populist appeal.
But Mr. Lula’s political movement has failed to produce a successor and appears to have lost touch with its base, as many Brazilians link it to corruption and government mismanagement.
If Mr. Bolsonaro now succeeds in unseating his leftist rival in the Oct. 25 runoff, he would gain unusually broad powers to shape Brazil. The next president will be able to appoint up to four new justices to the nation’s Supreme Court, which has 11 seats in total.
Even if Mr. Lula were to mount a comeback in the second round, analysts say it would prove nearly impossible to govern alongside a deeply conservative legislative branch allied with Mr. Bolsonaro.
Mr. Bolsonaro’s promises have excited some of his most ardent supporters, who believe his father was jailed unfairly and have been frustrated by a corruption scandal that has embroiled the nation’s top court.
But the idea of possibly weakening democratic checks and balances has also unnerved many in Brazil, a country with a dark history of strongmen and dictatorships, including the brutal military junta that ruled the nation between 1964 and 1985.
“If he is elected in the second round, it’s granting him almost total power,” Ms. Rocha said. “He will be able to do whatever he wants.”
Isabela Cruz and Thayz Guimarães contributed research.
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