And in the north-eastern city of Fortaleza, defeat for Patricia Gomes, a soft-left challenger, could hurt two potential presidential candidacies, those of Ciro Gomes, her ex-husband and campaign adviser, and of Tasso Jereissati, the governor of Ceara.
Mr da Silva has invited their small, soft-left parties to join him in government.
The opposition alliance, which links Frepaso with the ancient, soft-left Radical party, called a debate in Congress.
The two soft-left contenders, Ciro Gomes and Anthony Garotinho, were fading away.
Several other challengers, such as Itamar Franco, Mr Cardoso's quirky predecessor, and Ciro Gomes, a soft-left former state governor, seem to be fading.
In last month's election for mayor of Buenos Aires city, he backed the soft-left incumbent, who defeated a challenger supported by the Peronist party machine.
One explanation for Mr Chirac's embrace of a soft-left, statist, instinctively anti-capitalist creed could be that he is playing Mr Blair's post-ideological game of stealing the opposition's clothes ahead of the 2007 presidential election.
In the past few weeks, Mr Gore has reverted to the attack-dog mode that served him so well in previous campaigns, such as the one in 1988 when he savaged Michael Dukakis (another north-eastern centre-left Democrat) for being soft on crime.
Lampard stepped up to take the spot-kick but Sorensen got down to his left and held the England man's soft, side-footed effort - making it a third penalty miss in a row for the midfielder.
But now, right-handed hitters like Alex Rodriguez are forced to deal with the shift, seeing a mass of infielders in the left-field space where he used to deposit soft line drives for hits.
He's known for No Child Left Behind and for this - the phrase that he used during his first campaign, the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Up 78-71 with 3:40 left in the third, Wade tried to throw a soft lob to James, on the play where he got leveled by Boozer and Robinson sent James into an awkward collision with the basket stanchion.
After the hosts had been pegged back to 1-1 and seen Victor Obinna sent off for a crazy kick out at Sebastian Larsson, Cole bagged the winner with only 10 minutes left - and it was a personal nightmare for Blues keeper Ben Foster, who let the striker's soft shot roll under his hand and trickle over the line.
However, that was an advantage probably flattered by how Button had been able to save two new sets of the faster super-soft tyres, one for each run, whereas those in other teams had only one set left, having been forced to use their other sets to get through qualifying sessions one and two.
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