A popular radio anchorman, fond of amateur theater, Garotinho entered politics through grassroots activism, joining the Brazilian Communist Party and helping to reorganize the sugar-cane workers' union in Campos.
After being reelected for mayor in 1996, he was eventually elected Governor of Rio de Janeiro State in 1998, for the 1999–2002 term of office,[8] posing himself as the "crown prince" for Brizola, who had already entered a process of political decay and loss of charisma and personal influence.
[9] At the time already a conservative described by an American historian as a "responsible young man" with whom President Fernando Henrique Cardoso "could work"[10] as governor, Garotinho nevertheless targeted the poor by providing subsidized meals for R$1.00 (at the time equivalent to US$0.30) at "people's restaurants" (soup kitchens kept by private contractors),[11] building 35,000 affordable homes and giving, - since 1999 - badly-off families a monthly "citizen's check" (actually, a R$100.00 coupon that could be used to purchase food and personal hygiene items at stores[12]) - eligibility to whom was decided by a network of 807 religious organizations, mostly (82%) of them evangelical, specially from the Assembleias de Deus movement.
[14] Given the notorious ties between Pentecostalism and the urban unorganized poor - for which a conversion to Pentecostalism tends to stand for a newly found sense of community as well as for an aspiration at upward social mobility[15] - one could say that Garotinho stood for the preferential social connections created by his political mentor Leonel Brizola, differing from him in that he gave such connections a more politically conservative hue, by means of a kind of Right-wing populism in what is seem by many as simply pandering for the bare needs of the poor by means of a shallow philanthropy reduced to the concrete minimum.
[16] Others, however, consider that, conversely, one could also say that Garotinho gave evangelical politics a leftist slant,[17] in that his evangelicism is the personal choice of a recent and enthusiastic convert, who therefore acknowledges the most destitute ones by means not only of offering munificence, but of a shared identity.
[26] The move was seen as an attempt to secure federal funding for his wife's tenure as governor of the State of Rio de Janeiro and to increase Garotinho's chances in a future run for President of Brazil.
[27] As the 2006 presidential elections approached, Garotinho, intent on maintaining a candidacy that his party tended to turn down for supporting Lula's bid for reelection, announced on May 1, 2006 a hunger strike, allegedly in protest of what he called unjust treatment by the Brazilian media, after unanswered accusations of illegal campaign funding - mostly about his wife's spending of some R$120 million in contracts with various shadowy NGOs for providing undelivered services to the State's government, which the media saw as a way to divert funds to an electoral campaign.