[2] He was National Senator for Río Negro Province for eighteen years and was the vice-presidential candidate of Juntos por el Cambio in the 2019 general election.

[3] Ideologically, he considers himself a Peronist, republican and capitalist,[4] while also an admirer of Julio Argentino Roca and Carlos Saúl Menem administrations.

He earned a law degree at the National University of La Plata in 1976 and relocated to Río Negro Province, where he served as counsel for Hierro Patagónico Sierra Grande, a pig iron smelter, and for the Provincial Government.

He was named Vice-President of the Justicialist caucus in the Lower House in 1997; elections that year resulted in steep losses for the PJ, and Pichetto was not re-elected to a second term.

Throughout his career he was a "disciplined" party man, and supported President Carlos Menem's neo-liberal break from the traditionally populist PJ platform during the 1990s.

[9] From his bench Pichetto accompanied the main projects of the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, such as resolution 125, the nationalization of the AFJP and the media law.