The name of Javier Ortega Smith has been linked to Vox since the moment it was founded almost a decade ago. Now, the former general secretary and spokesman for the formation in the Madrid City Council is running to replace José Luis Martínez-Almeida in the mayoralty with a candidacy in which, as the experts emphasize, the party’s initials stand out more than his own name. Because Vox is Ortega Smith and Ortega Smith is Vox. At least, facing the 28-M. “He is a candidate who goes with a party that was seen and had a lot of prominence with the motion of no confidence in the Government,” says Gabriela Ortega, director of Strategy at the Educational Institution for Analysis, Leadership, Political Studies and Humanism (ALEPH ). A party, she adds, whose positions and ideas “are much more identified by the public now than four years ago.”
Four years that, on the other hand, have been quite turbulent, not only at the national level but within the City Council itself, since Vox has gone from supporting the PP to being very critical of Almeida, starting with the fact that the mayor He has not removed the Madrid Central from Manuela Carmena. And this, which took place in 2019, was only the beginning of a continuous refusal by his party to approve the budgets -to which they have only given their support once- and that is consummated today with the blockade of the new urban regulations of the city. A continuous fight that, however, has ended in recent days with an outstretched hand from Ortega Smith to Almeida, offering himself and Vox as substitutes for Ciudadanos in the new municipal government. “For me, Ortega Smith is facing these elections being aware that he has to play a role, and he is the one who is imposed by the initials,” Ortega asserts. And this, as the expert indicates, is far from building a policy of proposals and agreements.
«According to the surveys, he is not by far the best-known candidate for the people of Madrid, so if people know you little and you have to position yourself as a valid proposal to be in charge of the City Council, you communicate aggressively, with issues of counter-campaign more than of campaign». This means that, instead of making a campaign highlighting the needs of the city and making proposals to solve or improve them, it is making a “counter-campaign, which is when you make it against something.” In this case, Ortega Smith “has unilaterally attacked menas, immigration and squatting, and he is not really proposing anything, he simply says that he is against it.”
In this sense, the Political Science professor explains that “an electoral campaign is always reinforcing, that is, those who want to vote for you go to vote, activation, that is, mobilizing the electorate that has not decided whether to vote for you or even if he will go to vote, of conversion, that is, of trying to attract votes from other parties, and of deactivation, that is, trying to alienate people who are going to vote for other parties so that they do not vote ». And, in this sense, Ortega Smith with Vox is a profile that has “little ability to attract other voters other than those who were going to vote for the party whoever the candidate was.” This, which at first may seem like a weakness, for the political scientist Eduardo Bayón could be, in turn, a strength, “because it can prevent that type of voter from fleeing to the PP.”
“The great challenge that this candidate will have to face during the campaign is that the PP does not reach the majority, because that is where the party has the opportunity to make itself visible over the next four years,” says Ortega. “If the PP reaches a majority, Vox will go unnoticed in Madrid city during the next legislature.” Along the same lines, Bayón points out that the candidate “has to position himself in a highly polarized political debate between Maestre and Almeida”, so the main challenge for Ortega Smith in the face of 28-M is to “be a protagonist” in a context in which “the party is blurred in that it has lost competitive tension or the ability to electorally threaten a PP reinforced by the disappearance of Ciudadanos.”
In the particular case of Ortega Smith, Bayón emphasizes that “he is a candidate with a very tough profile, very much for some voters who identify a lot with Vox, but not for others.” He is, therefore, “a candidate to attract voters not from the center, nor from the left, but to the right of Vox. A profile to mobilize voters, accompanied by the electoral brand itself, and to have a more or less relevant role, or have more or less prominence in the future City Council ». In this way, Bayón asserts that “beyond the fact that he has already been a councilor, I believe that he has been chosen to run for mayor more thought in those terms than in competitive terms itself.”
Likewise, Ortega agrees that he is a candidate who stands out for “being a true political animal.” “He manages communication, oratory, very well, he takes many turns in the message towards what he wants to communicate, so as a candidate he has many strong points in this regard,” Ortega points out. As for his weaknesses, the expert confirms that “the initials of the party weigh more than him as a candidate.” “If he wanted to stand out as a candidate he should have run a more flashy campaign,” she says. However, and although “equally in votes it drags more Vox than Ortga Smith, I do not see a profile for him that is going to settle for erasing himself in the initials of his party.”
