Sarney’s Party Losing Key Posts in Brazil Vote

SAO PAULO, Brazil — President Jose Sarney’s ruling center-right party, saddled with voter discontent stemming from the country’s 700% inflation, was taking a beating late Wednesday from both the right and left in municipal election returns.

In the mayor’s race in Sao Paulo, Luiza Erundina, 53, a social worker and self-proclaimed Marxist, narrowly defeated millionaire businessman Paulo Maluf. Erundina, representing the Workers’ Party, becomes the first woman mayor of South America’s largest city.

In Rio, Brazil’s second-largest city, the projected mayoral winner in Tuesday’s election was Marcello Alencar, a 63-year-old lawyer from the leftist Democratic Labor Party. Social Democrats were also headed toward victory in Belo Horizonte, the third-largest city.

Leftists also seemed assured of victory in at least seven important state capitals. Candidates from various groups to the right of Sarney’s were leading comfortably in seven other capitals.

The biggest prize for the rightists was the large northeastern city of Recife, where Joaquim Francisco Cavalcanti, 40, of the Liberal Front Party, was far ahead.

More than 70 million Brazilians, bound by law to vote, cast ballots for mayors and city councils in 4,307 municipalities.

The election was viewed as an important indicator of party popularity as Brazil prepares for presidential elections in 1989.

Final returns are due Sunday.

Gov. Wellington Moreira Franco of Rio de Janeiro state, a member of Sarney’s party, said of the results: “The voters didn’t send us just a message. A message is short. This was a telex.”