Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas (born 19 June 1975) is a Brazilian politician, engineer, and former military captain currently serving as the 64th Governor of São Paulo since 1 January 2023. A member of the Republicans, he previously served as Minister of Infrastructure in the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro from 2019 to 2022.
Born in Rio de Janeiro and educated at the Military Institute of Engineering (IME), Freitas began his career as an engineer in the Brazilian Army before entering public administration. A key technocrat under Bolsonaro, he oversaw the privatization of ports and airports and the expansion of the national railway. In the 2022 São Paulo gubernatorial election runoff, he defeated former São Paulo mayor Fernando Haddad, ending nearly three decades of Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) rule.
As governor, Freitas has maintained high approval pursuing a pro-market agenda, most notably including the 2024 privatization of Sabesp, the largest water utility in Latin America. He is widely considered a leading figure of the Brazilian right and a possible presidential candidate. Freitas won a second term as governor of São Paulo in the first round of voting in the 2026 São Paulo election with 62.65% of the vote.
Early life and education
Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas was born on 19 June 1975 in Rio de Janeiro to Amaury Vieira Freitas and Maria Alice Gomes Freitas. His father, a salesman of humble origins who was raised in a favela, eventually secured a position working at the Banco do Brasil. His mother, a domestic worker, had emigrated to Brazil from Portugal.
At the age of three, Freitas relocated with his family to Águas Claras, a satellite city within the Federal District of Brasília, where he spent the remainder of his early childhood.
Education Freitas began his military training at the Escola Preparatória de Cadetes do Exército (EsPCEx) in Campinas before enrolling in the Academia Militar das Agulhas Negras (AMAN). In 1996, he graduated first in his class with a degree in military sciences, commissioning into the Army’s engineering branch. Freitas later earned a civil engineering degree from the Military Institute of Engineering (IME) in 2002, achieving the highest historical grade point average in the institution's history, followed by a master's in transport engineering in 2008 from the same institution.
His technical background is defined by specialized training in public administration, including an MBA in project management from Fundação Getulio Vargas (2003) and international certifications in public–private partnerships and procurement from institutions in London and Rome.
Early career
Freitas served as a second lieutenant commanding a platoon at the 10th Combat Engineering Company in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte (1997–1998). He was subsequently assigned to the 2nd Engineering Group in Manaus, Amazonas (2003–2006), where he oversaw infrastructure projects across the Amazon region, including federal highway maintenance and riverine construction, also auditing public works.
From November 2005 to June 2006, he served as Chief of the Technical Section for the Brazilian Engineering Company within the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), managing reconstruction efforts following the 2004 coup d'état and damage from Hurricane Jeanne.
Early administrative and government service Freitas resigned his commission at the rank of Captain in October 2008 to join the federal civil service as a finance and control analyst at the office of the Comptroller General (CGU). He served first as an adviser in the infrastructure audit directorate (2008–2011) and then as coordinator-general for audits of the transport sector (March–August 2011).
In August 2011, Freitas was appointed Executive Director of the National Department of Transport Infrastructure (DNIT) during a reorganisation of the Dilma Rousseff administration. He subsequently succeeded Jorge Fraxe as Director-General, a position Freitas held from September 2014 until January 2015.
Following his departure from DNIT in January 2015, Freitas placed first in the public competition for legislative consultant at the Chamber of Deputies, where he specialised in urban development and transport law until 2016.
Secretary for Project Coordination With the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff and the formation of the Temer administration, Freitas was appointed Secretary for Project Coordination within the newly established Investment Partnership Program (PPI), serving under Moreira Franco.
Freitas' tenure focused on structuring several major auctions. He oversaw the fourth round of airport concessions, covering Fortaleza, Salvador, Florianópolis, and Porto Alegre. Freitas also implemented port terminal leasing arrangements at Santarém and Vila do Conde. In this capacity, he was a principal architect of the federal government's shift toward a structured concession and privatisation model aimed at attracting foreign capital.
Minister of Infrastructure In November 2018, President-elect Jair Bolsonaro appointed Freitas to lead the newly created Ministry of Infrastructure, formed by merging the former ministries of Transport, Ports, and Civil Aviation. He took office on 1 January 2019.
Privatization
Aviation Under Freitas, the Ministry of Infrastructure pursued an accelerated airport concession programme using a cluster model that bundled high-traffic hubs with smaller regional airports to improve the commercial viability of less profitable terminals. Between 2017 and 2021, the government had already privatized 22 airports.
The airports were divided into three regional blocks (South, Central, and North) attracting bids at a premium of over 3,000 per cent above the government's minimum, totalling 3.3 billion reais, with concessionaires additionally committing to 6.1 billion reais in terminal investment over 30 years. The Brazilian infrastructure group CCR, now Motiva, acquired the South block for 2.1 billion reais and the Central block for 754 million reais, while French operator Vinci Airports won the North block for 420 million reais.
Ports On 30 March 2022, the federal government privatised the Companhia Docas do Espírito Santo (CODESA), the first transfer of a Brazilian port authority to private management. A proposal to privatise the Santos Port Authority, the largest in Latin America, was structured during his tenure but suspended following the change of federal administration after the 2022 presidential election.
Infrastructure projects and concessions Freitas prioritzed completing road and rail projects amid the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Roads BR-163, known informally as the "Soy Highway," runs approximately 3,500 kilometres from Rio Grande do Sul to Santarém, Pará, and serves as the primary export corridor for grain produced in Mato Grosso, Brazil's largest agricultural state. Construction of the highway began in 1976, but most of its stretch through the state of Pará remained unpaved for decades. Paving of the final section between Sinop, Mato Grosso and Miritituba, Pará was completed in November 2019, with the work carried out by two army engineering and construction battalions.The completion of the corridor reduced the round trip for grain trucks from ten to four days and, according to the Ministry of Infrastructure, reduced freight costs by approximately 26 per cent. However, the speed of the project raised environmental concerns.
In December 2020 the Ministry inaugurated the Guaíba Bridge in Porto Alegre to relieve congestion and improve access to the Port of Rio Grande.
Rail On 28 March 2019, Freitas' Ministry auctioned the 1,537-kilometre central stretch of the Norte–Sul Railway between Porto Nacional, Tocantins, to Estrela d’Oeste, São Paulo. Rumo Logística acquired the concession for 2,719,530,000 reais under a 30-year non-extendable contract, signed in Goiás on 31 July 2019. Rumo's bid was double the reserve price of 1.35 billion reais, and significantly ahead of the competing offer of 2.06 billion reais submitted by VLI Multimodal S.A., a consortium backed by Vale, Mitsui, and Brookfield.
The proposed Ferrogrão railway (EF-170), a 933-kilometre line intended to connect Sinop to Miritituba and run broadly parallel to BR-163, was suspended in March 2021. Justice Alexandre de Moraes of the Supreme Federal Court issued an injunction suspending Law 13.452/2017, which had altered the boundaries of Jamanxim National Park in Pará to accommodate the railway's route, on the grounds that protected conservation units could not be modified by provisional measure rather than formal legislation.
The suspension paralysed the concession proceedings pending a final verdict; as of 2021 no date for the full tribunal ruling had been set.
Legislative reforms Two significant legislative frameworks were enacted during Freitas's tenure:
The New Legal Framework for Railways (Law 14.273/2021) introduced an authorisation regime permitting private companies to propose and construct rail lines without a public tender. It was sanctioned in December 2021 with vetoes. Parliament later overturned several of those vetoes in 2023, clarifying aspects of the framework. The BR do Mar programme (Law 14.301/2022) liberalised coastal shipping by relaxing vessel chartering rules and reducing barriers to foreign-flagged ships. The measure was signed with partial vetoes in January 2022 by President Lula.
Freitas resigned in March 2022 to contest the governorship of São Paulo. During his tenure, the ministry conducted nearly 100 auctions and secured over 100 billion reais in contracted private investment.
Governor of São Paulo 2022 gubernatiorial election
Candidacy and coalition Freitas was launched as the Republicanos candidate for governor at the party’s 30 July 2022 convention in São Paulo, an event attended by President Jair Bolsonaro. Felicio Ramuth, the Mayor of São José dos Campos from the Social Democratic Party (PSD), was announced as his running mate. The deal was arranged by Gilberto Kassab, the PSD president and former São Paulo mayor. The electoral court subsequently recorded the ticket under the coalition “São Paulo Pode Mais.”It was his first electoral campaign; he had no prior connection to São Paulo state politics beyond a period of military training, and had been personally selected for the race by Bolsonaro, whose support had launched his entire political career. Earlier that year, challenges to his transfer of voter registration from Brasília to São José dos Campos were rejected by the São Paulo regional electoral court as either untimely or unproven, allowing the candidacy to proceed.
Platform and messaging
Freitas's platform centred on expanding public–private concessions, public security, and the reduction of state taxes including the IPVA and ICMS. His rhetoric positioned his candidacy as a break from the four consecutive PSDB administrations that had governed São Paulo since 1995, rather than a continuation of them.
On security, Freitas argued publicly against police body cameras, contending that their removal would signal that the state stood behind its officers. He also proposed reducing the age of criminal responsibility and building dedicated facilities for semi-open regime prisoners. On fiscal matters, he committed to maintaining ICMS on fuel at 18 per cent, crediting the reduction to Bolsonaro's national government.
Freitas entered the race polling at approximately 17 per cent against Haddad's 32 per cent. He participated in multiple televised debates, including those hosted by TV Bandeirantes and TV Globo, where exchanges between the candidates frequently extended beyond state policy to the rival national presidencies of Bolsonaro and Lula.
Paraisópolis shooting incident