Editing Jair Bolsonaro (section)

===Political career===
After leaving the army in 1988, Bolsonaro was elected to a seat on the Rio de Janeiro city council in 1989. Two years later he won a seat representing Rio de Janeiro in Brazil’s federal Chamber of Deputies that he would hold for seven consecutive terms. From his first term, Bolsanaro repeatedly praised the era of military rule and called for its return. 

He also began establishing a reputation for outspoken advocacy of deeply conservative positions on social issues and was branded by critics as a misogynist, homophobe, and racist. Among the many controversial remarks that he made over the years was his statement that he “would be incapable of loving a homosexual son” and that he would prefer his son to die in an accident rather than “show up with a mustachioed man.” 

When a female member of the Chamber of Deputies called him a rapist, Bolsonaro responded by saying, “I wouldn’t rape you because you don’t deserve it.” Later, having stated that he was not a rapist, he added that if he were, he would not rape the congresswoman in question because she was “not his type.” Commenting on the descendants of the fugitive African slaves who organized the ''quilombo'' communities, Bolsonaro said, “They do nothing! They are not even good for procreation.”

Inflammatory comments such as those contributed to the perception of Bolsonaro as an extremist and consigned to the political margins. Thus, he was able to author little successful legislation during his long tenure in the Chamber of Deputies. Nonetheless, he served as the head of the Committee on Foreign Relations and National Defense. He also was a member of the Commission on Human and Minority Rights and an alternate member of the Committee on Public Security and Combating Organized Crime.

Having entered elective office as a member of the Christian Democratic Party, in 1993 Bolsonaro shifted allegiance to the incipient Progressive Party, which joined forces with the Reform Progressive Party in 1995 to become the Brazilian Progressive Party. He changed party affiliation again in 2003, joining the Brazilian Labour Party, and in 2005, after a brief stint as a member of the Liberal Front, he returned to the fold of the Brazilian Progressive Party, which had readopted the name Progressive Party two years earlier. In 2016 he joined the Social Christian Party.

Bolsonaro’s fortunes changed when Brazil’s political culture spiraled downward in the second decade of the 21st century and the country’s economy went along for the ride. At the beginning of the second presidential term of [[Dilma Rousseff]] of the Workers’ Party, the country sunk deeper into a recession that had begun in 2014 and became mired in what some observers characterized as Brazil’s worst economic crisis since the turn of the 20th century. In the meantime, the biggest political scandal in Brazilian history—the Petrobras scandal—was unfolding, swelling to seemingly engulf the majority of Brazil’s mainstream politicians in allegations of corruption. 

Accused of financial accounting improprieties, Rousseff was impeached and removed from office. Her successor, [[Michel Temer]], was likewise the target of accusations of wrongdoing and saw his public approval rating shrink to single digits. At the same time, violence and crime in Brazil spiked.

As the campaign for Brazil’s 2018 presidential election began in earnest, Rousseff’s political mentor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (“Lula”), who had experienced tremendous popularity during his tenure as Brazil’s president (2003–11), became the clear front-runner, even though his involvement in the Petrobras scandal had led to his conviction on charges of corruption and money laundering in July 2017 (upheld in a January 2018 ruling) and to incarceration for a 12-year-plus sentence in April 2018. While Lula sought to be allowed to run for president in spite of his conviction, Bolsonaro, the candidate of the theretofore insignificant Social Liberal Party, mounted a populist campaign that sought to take advantage of Brazilians’ widespread disenchantment with the political establishment and rampant corruption. 

Using his outsider status to his advantage, Bolsonaro cast himself as an antiestablishment insurgent candidate with little concern for political correctness—in the vein of [[Donald Trump]], who had successfully leveraged that stance to win the 2016 U.S. presidential election; indeed, Bolsonaro was soon labeled the “Trump of the Tropics.” Bolsonaro also won the support of the country’s considerable Evangelical Christian population with his steadfast opposition to abortion, and his championing of law-and-order policies appealed to Brazilians concerned with crime and violence.

On September 6, while campaigning in Juiz de Fora, Bolsonaro was stabbed by a would-be assassin. His wounds required lifesaving surgery, after which he was forced to campaign from a hospital bed and then at home. However, Bolsonaro had already established a strong presence on social media, attracting more than 5.2 million Facebook followers and as many as one million viewers to some of his video posts.

In early August the national convention of the Workers’ Party chose Lula as its candidate, but, after the Superior Electoral Court ruled on August 31 that he was “ineligible” to run for the presidency, Lula withdrew his candidacy on September 11 and threw his support to his running mate, Fernando Haddad, the former mayor of São Paulo. As result of Lula’s departure from the race, Bolsonaro became the prohibitive favourite in the contest.

In the first round of voting on October 7, he far outpaced the rest of the 13-candidate field, capturing some 46 percent of the vote but falling short of the 50 percent necessary to prevent a runoff. Thus, the stage was set for a head-to-head battle on October 28 with Haddad, who had finished second in the first round with about 29 percent of the vote. Bolsonaro then swept to a commanding victory in the runoff, taking more than 55 percent of the vote, to become Brazil’s president-elect.