Brazilian candidate for president killed in small-plane crash

Emergency response officials work around the wreckage in the Brazilian port city of Santos where a small plane carrying presidential candidate Eduardo Campos crashed Wednesday, killing all seven people aboard. President Dilma Rousseff, who is seeking re-election, declared three days of mourning.

Emergency response officials work around the wreckage in the Brazilian port city of Santos where a small plane carrying presidential candidate Eduardo Campos crashed Wednesday, killing all seven people aboard. President Dilma Rousseff, who is seeking re-election, declared three days of mourning.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

SAO PAULO -- Brazilian presidential candidate Eduardo Campos died Wednesday when the small plane that was carrying him and several campaign officials plunged into a residential neighborhood in the port city of Santos, a City Hall official there said.

All seven people aboard the plane, including a campaign photographer and cameraman, a media adviser, as well as two pilots, died in the crash, City Hall media officer Patricia Fagueiro said.

Fagueiro also said six adults and a baby on the ground suffered injuries that were not life-threatening. Rescue officials said later that only five people were slightly hurt.

In a solemn address, President Dilma Rousseff declared three days of official mourning in honor of Campos and said she would suspend her campaign during that time.

"Today Brazil is in mourning and reeling from a death that took the life of a promising young politician," she said, adding that Campos had been facing "an extremely promising future."

Polls show Campos, the scion of a political family from the northeastern state of Pernambuco, was running behind Rousseff and another political rival. But his Brazilian Socialist Party ticket was widely regarded as among the best-placed to challenge Rousseff and her popular Workers Party, thanks largely to his running mate, the popular former Environment Minister Marina Silva, who joined Campos after she was prevented from running herself.

It was not immediately clear whether Silva would assume Campos' spot as the party's presidential candidate. Under Brazilian law, in the event of a candidate's death, the party has 10 days to decide on a substitute.

Brazilian television broadcast a continuous loop of images of the wreckage. Brazil's top broadcaster, Globo, ran interviews with witnesses who reported the plane was already ablaze before the crash that took place around 10 a.m. local time.

Aeronautical authorities said the craft, a Cessna 560XL, was attempting to land in bad weather.

The plane took off from Rio de Janeiro, where Campos had appeared in a television interview Tuesday, and was headed to the city of Guaruja, where he was to give a talk about Brazil's ports.

The country's top politicians expressed their shock and sorrow over the accident, with Vice President Michel Temer calling it a "tragedy for Brazilian politics."

"Eduardo Campos was a politician of principles and values," Temer wrote on his website. "Along with the entire country, I am shocked by this accident and by the loss for friends and family."

Eliseu Gabriel, a Sao Paulo city councilman who heads the Brazilian Socialist Party in Sao Paulo, said the party has yet to make any decisions on how to move forward, saying only that the campaign was "stopping" for the moment.

"The campaign was about to start, and he had a big chance of making it to the second round" of Brazil's two-round race, Gabriel said. "Eduardo Campos represented a great hope for a profound change in Brazilian politics."

Rousseff, the hand-picked successor of popular former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has seen her popularity flag in recent months because of dissatisfaction with slowing growth, high taxes and poor public services.

Campos, 49, was married and the father of five children, the youngest of whom was born in January. The heir of a political dynasty that stretched back to his grandfather, he served two terms as governor of Pernambuco state.

His brother, Antonio Campos, told Globo and other broadcasters that Campos would be buried in the family tomb in Pernambuco, where his grandfather's body lies. The grandfather, Miguel Arraes, died on the same date, Aug. 13, nine years earlier.

Information for this article was contributed by Adriana Gomez Licon and Ana Santos of The Associated Press.

A Section on 08/14/2014