BOA VISTA, Brazil - A news anchor running for mayor of São Paulo attacked his opponent with a chair during a televised debate, shocking this nation and plunging the race to govern the Western Hemisphere’s largest city into political chaos.
José Luiz Datena slammed a chair into opponent Pablo Marçal, an Instagram influencer who sells self-help guidance to his legion of online fans, at the Sunday evening event.
Complaining of painful breathing, Marçal was taken the hospital, where aides told Brazilian media that he was diagnosed with a fractured rib. One of his fingers was dislocated, emergency officials told Brazilian media.
A polemicist by nature, Marçal has used antics and aggressive rhetoric to upend the race to govern the city of 12 million people and sent his electoral numbers rising.
Marçal, who was polling third behind incumbent Ricardo Nunes and leftist challenger Guilherme Boulos, said in the lead-up to the debate that he wanted to “destabilize” the television news broadcaster - who was polling at 6 percent - and force him out of the race. The election is due to take place in early October.
On Sunday, Marçal repeatedly brought up a sexual harassment case against Datena. In 2019, a reporter on the show on which Datena worked went to the police and accused him of making frequent sexually suggestive comments about her. The reporter later retracted the allegations.
Datena said Marçal was turning the debate into another one of his internet shows, accusing him of “subverting the entire prospective of these debates.” Datena asked his opponent to take back the remarks, saying the sexual harassment claims had caused his family significant emotional duress.
In response, Marçal called Datena “all bark and no bite.”
“You once came over to me during a debate to give me a slap, but you’re not even man enough to do that.”
Datena then picked up a chair and slammed it into Marçal’s back.
The attack was the latest twist in a campaign already studded with unexpected surprises. The largest has been the ascension of Marçal, who has used his performances in the debates to push out a barrage of social media clips that garnered tens of millions of views and helped to raise his standing in the race.
Marçal’s ability on social media is unquestioned - he’s gathered more than 13 million followers on Instagram.
His business acumen is more nebulous. The Brazilian publication Jota said a media spokesperson described him as a “multi-employer of success” who “acts as the CVO (Chief Visionary Officer) of a multibillion-dollar conglomerate,” giving rise to “one of the largest business ecosystems in Latin America.”
He sells self-help courses, Jota noted, such as “a training of emotional intelligence based on Neurolinguistics Programming.”
After the chair assault, Marçal compared the attack to the assassination attempts on Donald Trump in July and on Jair Bolsonaro, who was stabbed in the days before the 2018 presidential election that he later won.
“Why is there so much hate?” he wrote on Instagram.