The party quickly begun to benefit from the political opening that the military was reluctantly organizing. In the local elections of 1982, it ran candidates for the first time, and won two races for mayor. Throughout the 1980s, as democracy was gradually re-created in Brazil, the Workers’ Party begun to take over more and more local governments. By 1988it controlled the governments in thirty-six municipalities, including large cities such as Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre. In 1989, in the first free presidential elections since the military coup, Lula won 16percent of the vote in the first round as the party’s candidate. In the runoff race with Femando Collor, he won 44 percent