Romeu Zema

He ran the family Zema Group from 1990 to 2016 and was Governor of Minas Gerais from 2019 to 2026. He was NOVO's candidate for President of Brazil in the 2026 election, in which he received 0.27% of the first-round vote.

Career

Zema holds a business administration degree from the Getúlio Vargas Foundation and led the Zema Group conglomerate from 1990 to 2016. He belonged to the Liberal Party from 2000 to 2018, then joined NOVO. He won the governorship of Minas Gerais in 2018 with 42.73% in the first round and 71.80% in the runoff, and was re-elected in 2022 with 56.18% in the first round. Mateus Simões succeeded him as governor in 2026.

Positions

Wikipedia describes him as economically liberal and a pragmatic conservative, focused on cutting government spending and on market-oriented reforms. As governor he reduced the number of state secretariats from 21 to 12, reformed state pensions and signed a 37.68 billion reais agreement with the mining company Vale S.A. over damages from the Brumadinho dam disaster.

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Wikipedia · Wikipedia

Photo: Andressa Anholete/Agência Senado, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons (cropped)