Blanco supporters then turned to party leader and Mayor of Santo Domingo, the popular José Francisco Peña Gómez.

At first he did not accept it (neither declined it) but after surviving a heart attack he believed it was his destiny to become president and so he decided to run against his once closest party colleague.

The race was extremely close and divisive, even causing a shoot out at the Concorde Hotel but when results came in, Majluta was declared the winner.

Carlos Andrés Pérez President of Venezuela and strong activist of Socialist International campaigned for Gomez to be included on the ticket as vice president but Majluta said he preferred to lose than to win alongside Peña Gomez who he felt had betrayed him by competing against him.

A deal similar to the one Guzmán had made with Blanco and the latter with Majluta was offered to Gomez but he declined calling it a "cursed gift".

This caused some disgust among young reformers like Victor Gomez Berges and Fernando Alvarez Bogaert who claimed that Balaguer was too old (80) to run for the presidency, but he ultimately achieved the nomination with only token opposition from Julio Cesar Castaños Espaillat who only received one vote (his own).

Juan Bosch received no opposition for the nomination of the Dominican Liberation Party, which he had founded after splitting from the PRD in 1973.

Besides Wessin, he was now also supported by Donald Reid Cabral ex-President of the triumvirate that ruled the country while Balaguer was in exile, Mario Read Vittini, and many communists who had fought him in the past, including Tacito Perdomo.

[5] After a bloody riot in 1984 which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people, the PRD could no longer attack Balaguer for the dark past of his previous governments which enabled him to get much of the youth vote.

[9] A month passed and there was still uncertainty over who had really won the election but Balaguer's margin had grown and ended up surpassing the number of invalid votes.