Sanderson and Marcel van Hattem are elected senators for Rio Grande do Sul

Sanderson and Marcel van Hattem — Photo: Sérgio Gonzalez/Disclosure

Sanderson (PL) and Marcel van Hattem (Novo) were elected senators for Rio Grande do Sul this Sunday (4). With 87.04% of the sections counted, they had 3,069,361 votes (30.05%) and 3,066,279 votes (30.02%), respectively.

In 2026, two senators were elected in each state and in the Federal District, to renew 54 of the 81 seats. Therefore, each voter voted for two different candidates.

"We have to resolve the fiscal issue of RS. The issue of rural debt, in addition, of course, to returning protagonism to RS", declared Sanderson after the definition.

"From the beginning we bet on the campaign together and married, who is Marcel is Sanderson and who is Sanderson is Marcel. We want to recover Brazil. We have no feeling of revenge, we want justice. What happens in the Federal Supreme Court (STF) cannot be tolerated", declared Van Hattem after the definition.

For Sanderson, this will be his first term in the Senate. He entered politics in 2018, when he was elected federal deputy for the first time, before being re-elected in 2022.

Born in Erechim in 1969, he was raised in Santo Ângelo. He is an R2 officer of the Brazilian Army of the Infantry weapon. He left the Armed Forces to join the Federal Police (PF) in 1996, where he remained until his election to the Federal Chamber in 2018.

He was president of the Union of Federal Police Officers of RS and advisor to the National Federation of Federal Police Officers. In the Chamber, he chaired the Chamber's Permanent Committee on Public Security and Combating Organized Crime in 2023 and was deputy leader of the Opposition to the Lula (PT) government in 2025. Furthermore, he was deputy leader of the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government in the Chamber.

Van Hattem will also serve his first term in the Senate. Current federal deputy, he entered politics in 2004, at the age of 18, being elected councilor in Dois Irmãos. Later, he was a state deputy from February 2015 to March 2018, the year in which he was the most voted federal deputy in Rio Grande do Sul, with 349,855 votes. In 2022, he was re-elected.

He served as the first leader of the Novo bench in the Chamber of Deputies and is the coordinator of the External Commission on the damage caused by the floods in RS.

Van Hattem has a bachelor's degree in International Relations and a specialization in Law, Economics and Constitutional Democracy, both from UFRGS. He obtained a master's degree in Political Science from Leiden University, in Journalism, Media and Globalization from the Universities of Aarhus, Denmark, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands and is a graduate of the Political, Social and Business Leadership Program at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., United States.

Campaign

During the campaign, both candidates reinforced a slogan: "Whoever votes for Sanderson, votes for Van Hattem; and whoever votes for Van Hattem, votes for Sanderson". The effort for a block vote on the ticket was translated into the practice of the electorate: those now elected had a very similar voting rate.

In the debates, PL and Novo politicians bet on doubles. They chose each other to debate and criticize not only their opponents in the dispute, but to speak against the Lula (PT) government.

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