Odd question

I've held offices in the USA and been on countless committees in the past. I have but one word of advice to you, "don't"

@rraypo I know brazil has a high number of political assassinations

@Canforbra

In making any of my life choices like buying a car, moving, going back to school, or getting into politics, I take a sheet of paper and draw a vertical line dividing the paper into left and right sides. I label one side as pros, the other, as cons. One day, when creating this list to run for another office, I realized my "pro" side was blank

@rraypo I have bin asked to run before in canada but turned it down.

I would like to make nature or a cultural documentary.

Maybe a tourism documentary

I have bin asked to run before in canada but turned it down.

    -@Canforbra

Like so many others, all of my life, I have fought strongly for what I felt was right, and have volunteered thousands and thousands of hours. In the end, I was the one who always lost, health, friends, my first wife, and years and years of my life... and worse yet, In the end, my efforts were always in vain

@rraypo can't change system that is created in a certain way and refuses change.

Just shows the arrogance and ignorance of people.

    Has anyone thought about running for some kind of political office in Brazil, council or mayor?
   

    -@Canforbra

You cannot run unless you are a "fully paid up" Brazilian citizen, and then you must have the backing of one political party or another otherwise you have no chance of making any impact.

12/20/23    Has anyone thought about running for some kind of political office in Brazil, council or mayor?I asked my wife about it one day and she shut me down right away, saying I don't want that kind of mess. Haha        -@Canforbra

To run for political office in Brazil - or to compete in a "concurso" for a significant civil service post, for that matter - an individual must be a Brazilian citizen.  As @Peter Itamaraca aptly put it, it's necessary to be a "fully paid-up" citizen:  have an unbroken voting record (voting is compulsory here for citizens between the ages 18 and 70), no known tax or other infractions, military service or a legal exemption in the case of a male, and so on.  So if you're considering politics eventually, keeping your reputation clean from your first day in-country is a good start.

Municipal office might be attainable with the right political backing.  A wide array of senior policymaking and oversight posts above that, more than in most other Western democracies, are constitutionally limited to native-born citizens, "brasileiros natos", and so permanently closed to you.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that political assassination is common here:  one reason that it gets so much coverage when it does happen is because it's relatively UNcommon.  No Brazilian Head of State has ever been assassinated, a sterling record for this part of the world.  Most political assassinations here, the attempt on Bolsonaro and the assassination of Marielle Franco in Rio being notable exceptions, have been more like gang warfare under another name, with a lot of murky personal issues involved.

In the kind of low-level politics that will be available to you as a naturalized citizen, you'll be in more danger from boredom than from bullets.

In the kind of low-level politics that will be available to you as a naturalized citizen, you'll be in more danger from boredom than from bullets.        -@abthree

Holding office in any country is not hard.  Apart from the meeting the basic requirement (like @peter_itamaraca described), the main requirement is to have a calling from a higher power and follow that with blind faith.  Without that, you will definitely have days when you will wonder why you are doing what you are doing.

Like @rraypo, I have been asked to serve in multiple non-profit steering groups but after accepting some positions (and declining others), I found out that my heart was not in those endeavors - and I then had to withdraw.

Unless politics and public service is really in your blood, don't.  You will eventually regret it.

@Canforbra, it is good that you asked your better half as she probably knows you really well.  Politics and public service can be so taxing that you will definitely need help and your counterpart will probably need to contribute.  If you were surprised that she was not supportive, then it is highly probable that she knows something about you that you don't know about yourself.

All jokes aside, politics and public service is not for the faint of heart.  Unless you really like this career, it will become just a drudgery. (@abthree's point). For those following stateside politics, think of what McCarthy is going through right now.

The old adage "If you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life" still applies to politics / public service.

12/20/23 @Canforbra.  Here's another odd answer.  For anyone looking for a way to make a difference, the private charity sector in Brazil is astonishingly underdeveloped in comparison with North America.  A person with a lot of energy, good ideas, and an understanding of the Brazilian reality can make a big impact, and citizenship is not required.

I met one of my best friends when we were Peace Corps Volunteers together in Aracaju, Sergipe in the 1970s.  At the end of our service I went home while she, a physical therapist, stayed on and opened her first clinic for the same clients she'd been treating as a Volunteer, poor children with disabilities.  Today the successor of that clinic is the largest and probably most trusted medical NGO in the state, treating over 1000 children and adolescents with disabilities a year, and adults as well, since service is never denied to clients just because they "age out".  Treatment is offered through a network of clinics, reception centers, group homes for independent living, a halfway house for recovering addicts, and a women's shelter, the latter two because my friend was asked by the state to take over the failing charities that managed them and to get them back on their feet.

My friend married a Brazilian but has remained a Permanent Resident for fifty years, never bothering to become naturalized, so she's never held office or even voted -- but politicians love to have their pictures taken with her.  And when she calls a politician, whether it's the mayor, the governor, or the state's deputies or senators in Brasília, her calls are taken or returned.

@abthree what I read up about it was many naturalized foreign born people can and do run for for various posts in Brazil.

Some offices are out of reach if your not a brazilian born person. Such as president, military officer, and some other high up posts.

But if your legally naturalized,  held a permanent residency  and have held a voter registration card for 1 year you can run for a post.

If your from Portugal you just need your permanent residency to run for office.

As for the assassination aspect.  I read an academic paper that was written by a professor in Brazil on political killings and she mapped them out in Brazil in a 17 year time from. 2000 to 2017 and found the numbers were high compared to most countries.

I read a lot of random things.

I am not really interested in running.

As I said it was an odd question mostly from my readings.

    @Canforbra
In making any of my life choices like buying a car, moving, going back to school, or getting into politics, I take a sheet of paper and draw a vertical line dividing the paper into left and right sides. I label one side as pros, the other, as cons. One day, when creating this list to run for another office, I realized my "pro" side was blank
   

    -@rraypo

Old Ben Franklin Ledger

    Has anyone thought about running for some kind of political office in Brazil, council or mayor?
I asked my wife about it one day and she shut me down right away, saying I don't want that kind of mess. Haha
   

    -@Canforbra

Not worth the while.  As in any political establishment system, you have to compromise to get your agenda past quorum. 

In the US, up until Jimmy Carter's term, both sides of the isle negotiated,two party system, quid pro quo, you got your votes, for as long as you held seniority in the house..

The way your congressman and senators got paid in the US was.... lobby representatiives met your policy maker, usually a fresh out of college mind that drafted the documents,  he presented the written draft the other party set the terms for your bag money,  some dinner with a $1,000 plates to sweeten up the deal through the P.A.C,  and things got done.

And then, you had the cash cows .. the lucrative approprietation commitees were always known.....Defense, Health Care, now Transportation, some crumbles from HUD, Department of Agriculture.

Out here in the plantation, there are so many parties, it's almost impossible to get your bills past.  Out here in the plantation, they are all conjuring fraud and graft schemes ( as they do in Florida by the way ).

And at the Municipality level, regardless of tax base, all the offices here are elected posts, and they are overpaid.

In the small US towns, being so small, all legislative bodies are made up by volunteers, and your mayor is hired, not elected. Town Hall meetings used to be the norm in Rural America. 

Out here, if the town is small enough, someone owns the town. Not comfortable being an incumbent mayor. 

The most notorious example of a decent politician we had, was Santo Andre's Mayor, the late Celso Daniel. Got a tortured and assassinated by some henchmen, for  trying  to break the rackets set up by his own party ( PT, bt the way ) to feed the party campaign money. The rackets kicking up were  then Garbage and Bus Line Concessions.

The store where  I buy construction materials, the owner, an elderly lady, told me how genuine and idealistic Mr. Daniel was.  His living parlor, not a piece of fancy decor, all books.  The fact he was a closet gay, no one care. Very much loved out here.   

Nolt that we are getting  a bad one in office, but he Celso Daniel was special and loved by his constituents. 

Moral to the story, if you try to do the right thing here, you will get destroyed.  Exceptional leaders happen every once in a blue moon here.

And another thing....

Trying to have a conversation with your garden variety Brazilian about pressing issues, or to make your point, is an exercise of futility. 

First of all, their educational system is not one that produces people to think on their feet, and formulate opinions based on facts.   

Second, the moment you start an argument about something, that you rather expose it completely, and justify your points, that's when you lose them.   They see not having any leg on the matter, they veer off to another non related subject. 

If you pick up your garden variety American born and bred conspiracy theorist, he/she will go to the bitter end, and at least provide you, as twisted they might be, factual arguments to support their views.

Brazilians are a shallow bunch by design .   

And as far as getting consensus for the common good..... fuggedaboutit .   You ain't dealing with a bunch of Dutchmen who can reach common ground and actually go about putting in their share of whatever it takes to get it done. 

The idea of common good, commonwealth, common property is totally alien to Brazilians. 

Getting Brazilans to take action on something that matters to them, as for civic engagement, fat chance.

The similarities between US  and Brazil : You pretty much can glean this by the way Brazilians choose their elected officials. Being popular is what counts. So much so, they voted in Iliterate former circus clowns, athletes, showbiz personas. Pretty much like Americans done in a lesser degree.

@sprealestatebroker, re: brazilians not thinking on their feet... I think that this may be a result of past brain drain.  A good friend of mine was born in Manaus but moved to the US for college - Cornell University.  I also hired a pretty good engineer out of USP - via the US H1B process - and he is now at Google.  All this in the early 2000's.

I did not know what the economic situation in Brazil was back then but I do not consider those 2 Brazilians above as "not thinking on their feet".   It seems that the cream of the crop in the Brazil intellectual circles is very mobile.

My gut feeling is that if the economy gets better you will be able to see those very capable individuals back.

As you can see, I am a glass half-full kinda guy....

RE: public service / run for office... My kids are all scouts - and this program really teaches useful life skills.  I know that the Boy Scouts of America had its problems but now that it is Scouts of America (with boys and girls allowed and doing the same program), there is a chance to get the new generation to become more practical.  Or at least away from their phones to learn skills.