Eduardo Campos

Eduardo Henrique Accioly Campos (10 August 1965 – 13 August 2014) was a Brazilian congressman and governor.

Born and raised in Recife, in the Northeast Brazil, he graduated in Economics from the Recife's Federal University of Pernambuco.

Campos' maternal grandfather, the governor of the Brazilian state, Pernambuco, made him his Financial Secretary.

Campos became a federal congressman in Brazil and got Pernambuco federal money for a shipyard, railways and an oil refinery.

Later, as Brazil's Minister for Science and Technology, he supported stem-cell research.

He served two terms as governor of his home state, Pernambuco.

He helped hospitals, secondary schools, wind power, farms, poor people and anti-crime data-mining.

In 1986, Campos turned down an opportunity to take a master's degree in the United States of America in order to participate in the campaign which elected his grandfather Miguel Arraes as governor of Pernambuco.

With Arraes' election, in 1987, Campos took up the position of Chief of Staff.

In this period he was responsible for the creation of the first Science and Technology Secretariat of the Northeast – Secretaria de Ciência e Tecnologia do Nordeste – and the Science and Technology Support Foundation-Fundação de Amparo à Ciência e Tecnologia de Pernambuco (Facepe).

Campos joined the Brazilian Socialist Party – Partido Socialista Brasileiro (PSB), in 1990.

In the same year, he was elected state representative and garnered the Leão do Norte award granted by the Legislative Assembly of Pernambuco to its most active members.

In 1994, Campos was elected Federal Representative with one hundred and thirty three thousand votes.

However, he left the post to join the government of Miguel Arraes as Government Secretary and Treasury Secretary, between 1995 and 1998.

In this last year, he ran for a new tenure of Federal Representative and reached the record number of 173.657 thousand votes, the biggest polling in the state.

In 2002, being for the third time a member of the Federal Congress, Campos was the articulator of Lula's government in the Social Welfare and Fiscal Reforms.

For three consecutive years, he was on the list of the Inter-Union Department of the Parliamentary Advisory Board – Departamento Intersindical de Assessoria Parlamentar (DIAP), amongst the 100 members who had been most influential in the National Congress.

Campos took office in 2004 as Science and Technology Minister – the youngest member among those appointed for the first tenure of President Lula.

During his administration, the Ministry re-elaborated the strategic planning and reviewed the Brazilian Space and Nuclear Energy Programs.

The action that had the strongest repercussion, during his stay in the ministry, was the approval of the Biosafety Program, which allows the use of embryonic stem cells and trans-genetics for research aims.

He also achieved unanimously in Congress, the approval of the Technological Innovation Law, resulting in the regulatory framework for enterprises, universities and research institutions.

Another important action during Campos' tenure in this office was the creation of the Brazilian Public Schools Mathematics Olympics – considered to be the biggest Mathematics Olympics in the world in number of participants.

In 2005 Campos became the National President of the Brazilian Socialist Party – Partido Socialista Brasileiro.

However, at the beginning of 2006, he left this post in order to run for the government of the state of Pernambuco, by the Popular Front.

Campos ran for the government of the state of Pernambuco in 2006.

As the moderate left-wing nominee, who had started the disputed election in third place in the polls, he was elected with more than 60% of the valid votes for governor in the second round.

As in 2007, he had the support of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president at that time.

Campos was re-elected, being then, the most well voted governor in Brazil: more than 80% of the valid votes in the first round, defeating Senator Jarbas Vasconcelos.

With his government well evaluated and high popularity, Eduardo Campos ran for re-election in 2010.

In 2011, he was re-elected president of the party, with tenure until 2014.

In his 2014 campaign for president of Brazil he criticized the incumbent and her Workers' Party and positioned himself as the business-friendly leader of the Brazilian Socialist Party.

For outdoor rallies and local radio interviews, he criss-crossed the country by rented jet.

He died on 13 August 2014, three days after his 49th birthday, when his plane crashed in poor weather in the city of Santos.

Eduardo Campos studied Economics at the Federal University of Pernambuco.

He was married to Renata Campos and they had five children (Maria Eduarda, João Henrique, Pedro Henrique, José Henrique and Miguel).

João Henrique became a federal deputy for the state of Pernambuco and later was elected mayor of Recife.

Campos was the grandson of Miguel Arraes.

former Governor of Pernambuco and former Federal Deputy, and son of the Minister of the Court of Accounts of the Union and former Federal Deputy Ana Arraes with Maximiliano Campos.

Campos was a practising Roman Catholic until his death.

Campos entered politics while still in university, when he was elected as president of the Economics College Student Academic Center.