In 1986, Campos turned down an opportunity to take a master's degree in the United States of America in order to participate in the campaign which elected his grandfather Miguel Arraes as governor of Pernambuco.

In the same year, he was elected state representative and garnered the Leão do Norte award granted by the Legislative Assembly of Pernambuco to its most active members.

In this last year, he ran for a new tenure of Federal Representative and reached the record number of 173.657 thousand votes, the biggest polling in the state.

In 2002, being for the third time a member of the Federal Congress, Campos was the articulator of Lula's government in the Social Welfare and Fiscal Reforms.

For three consecutive years, he was on the list of the Inter-Union Department of the Parliamentary Advisory Board – Departamento Intersindical de Assessoria Parlamentar (DIAP), amongst the 100 members who had been most influential in the National Congress.

The action that had the strongest repercussion, during his stay in the ministry, was the approval of the Biosafety Program, which allows the use of embryonic stem cells and trans-genetics for research aims.

He also achieved unanimously in Congress, the approval of the Technological Innovation Law, resulting in the regulatory framework for enterprises, universities and research institutions.

In 2012, the government of Pernambuco won two of the five categories of the United Nations Public Service Awards (UNPSA), one on Fostering participation in Policy Making decisions through innovative mechanisms, with the workshops "All for Pernambuco", and another in the category Promoting Gender Responsive Delivery of Public Services, with the Women's Straw Hat Project – Chapéu de Palha Mulher.

The prizes were given in New York (USA), in a ceremony at the UN Headquarters, coordinated by the UN General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser.

In 2013, the project received, in Washington DC, capital of the United States of America, the Safe Government award for good practices in crime and violence prevention.

Between 2006 and 2013, Pernambuco has been established as the northeastern state with the highest gain in life expectancy (3.72 years), exceeding the regional average.

The students from the Technical Schools of Pernambuco have an average performance 47% superior compared to the students from other states in Brazil, like São Paulo and Santa Catarina, according to the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research (NIES) – Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais (Inep).

In October 2013, Eduardo Campos announced the Programmatic Alliance with the Sustainability Network of the former Senator and Environment minister from Lula's government, Marina Silva, whose new party's registration claim had been denied by the Electoral Supreme Court (ESC) – Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE).