Rodolfo Hernández is Colombia’s Trump and He May Be Headed for the Presidential

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Colombia’s political landscape has shifted remarkably in a matter of 24 hours.

For months, pollsters predicted that Gustavo Petro, a former rebel-turned-senator making a bid to be the nation’s first leftist president, would head to a June presidential runoff against Federico Gutiérrez, a conservative establishment candidate who had argued that a vote for Mr. Petro amounted to “a leap into the void.’’

Instead, on Sunday, voters gave the top two spots to Mr. Petro and Rodolfo Hernández, a former mayor and wealthy businessman with a populist, anti-corruption platform whose outsider status, incendiary statements and single-issue approach to politics have earned him comparisons to Donald Trump.

The vote — for a leftist who has made a career assailing the conservative political class and for a relatively unknown candidate with no formal party backing — represented a repudiation of the conservative establishment that has governed Colombia for generations.

But it also remade the political calculus for Mr. Petro. Now, it is Mr. Petro who is billing himself as the safe change, and Mr. Hernández as the dangerous leap into the void.

“There are changes that are not changes,” Mr. Petro said at a campaign event on Sunday night, “they are suicides.”

Mr. Hernández once called himself a follower of Adolf Hitler, has suggested combining major ministries to save money, and says that as president he plans to declare a state of emergency to deal with corruption, leading to fears that he could shut down Congress or suspend mayors.

Still, Colombia’s right-wing establishment has begun lining up behind him, bringing many of their votes with them, and making a win for Mr. Petro look like an uphill climb.

On Sunday, Mr. Gutiérrez, a former mayor of Medellín, the country’s second-largest city, threw his support behind Mr. Hernández, saying his intention was to “safeguard democracy.”

But Fernando Posada, a political scientist, said the move was also the establishment right’s last-ditch effort to block Mr. Petro, whose plan to remake the Colombian economy “puts at risk many of the interests of the traditional political class.”

“The Colombian right has reached such an extremely disastrous stage,” said Mr. Posada, “that they prefer a government that offers them nothing as long as it is not Petro.”

Mr. Hernández, who had gained limited attention in most of the country until just a few weeks ago, is a one-time mayor of the mid-sized city of Bucaramanga in the northern part of the country. He made his fortune in construction, building low-income housing in the 1990s.

At 77, Mr. Hernández built much of his support on TikTok, once slapped a city councilman on camera and recently told The Washington Post that he had a “messianic” effect on his supporters, who he compared to the “brainwashed” hijackers who destroyed the twin towers on 9/11.

Pressed on whether such a comparison was problematic, he rejected the idea. “What I’m comparing is that after you get into that state, you don’t change your position. You don’t change it.”

Until just a few days ago, Colombia’s political narrative seemed simple:…