Sergio Massa - Biography - Career in National Politics

Career in National Politics

The pragmatic Massa ran on President Néstor Kirchner's center-left Front for Victory ticket during the 2005 legislative elections. Securing a seat in the Chamber of Deputies (lower house of Congress), he forfeited it at the behest of the President, who requested that he stay on as Director of ANSeS. Remaining at the post two more years, he oversaw the voluntary conversion of several million private pension accounts to the ANSeS' aegis when this choice was made available in December 2006.

Massa was elected Mayor of the Paraná Delta city of Tigre in October 2007. Those elections also brought President Néstor Kirchner's wife, Senator Cristina Kirchner, to the Presidency. Enjoying large majorities in Congress, her administration suffered its first major setback when her proposals for higher agricultural export taxes were defeated on July 16, 2008, with Vice President Julio Cobos's surprise, tie-breaking vote against them. The controversy helped lead to the July 23 resignation of Alberto Fernández, the president's Cabinet Chief, and to his replacement with Sergio Massa who, at 36, became the youngest person to hold the influential post since its creation in 1994.

He was persuaded to run as a stand-in candidate (who, after the election, would cede his new seat to a down-ticket name on the party list) for the ruling Front for Victory (FpV) ahead of the June 2009 mid-term elections. Massa, however, enlisted his own candidates - including his wife - for Tigre City Council under his own ticket, and its success in these city council races distanced him from others in the FpV. Massa had, moreover, harbored differences with the president over a number of policies, including the nationalization of loss-producing private pension funds, the use of the INDEC bureau to understate inflation data, and the vast regulatory powers granted to Commerce Secretary Guillermo Moreno. Following the FpV's narrow defeat in the Lower House mid-term races, Massa tendered his resignation to the President, effective July 7. Massa, who appointed the city council president as provisional mayor while he served as the president's cabinet chief, returned to his office of Mayor of Tigre on July 24.

Massa's second term as mayor earned him plaudits from local voters and neighboring mayors alike for his focus on crime prevention, and he joined a group of eight Buenos Aires Province mayors in calling for the establishment of local police departments independent of the Provincial Police; this 'Group of 8' had become disaffected to varying degrees with the Kirchner government, and came to view Massa as presidential timber for a future date. He stumbled into controversy, however, when the Wikileaks disclosures of 2010 mentioned a number of indiscretions on Massa's part during a dinner hosted the previous year at the U.S. Ambassador's Residence. He was said by one of Ambassador Vilma Socorro Martínez's cables to have revealed details about working with former President Néstor Kirchner, stating that he was "a psychopath; a monster whose bully approach to politics shows his sense of inferiority." He reportedly added that the former president "runs the Argentine government" while his wife (the President) "followed orders," and that she "would be better off without him."

He nevertheless remained allied as a member of the FpV to the Cristina Kirchner administration, and was re-elected mayor on the FpV slate with 73% of the vote. Polling ahead of the October 2013 mid-term elections gave him better prospects running for Congress under the FpV party list than on a separate slate. Upon the filing deadline on June 22, however, Massa ultimately opted to form his own Frente Renovador ('Renewal Front') ticket with the support of the 'Group of 8' Buenos Aires Province Mayors and others, notably former Argentine Industrial Union president José Ignacio de Mendiguren (an ally of Kirchnerism).