Teodoro Picado Michalski, a serving deputy and
President of Congress since 1941, was officially nominated as the presidential candidate of the ruling
National Republican Party on 2 May 1942, two years prior to the election. Communist leader
Manuel Mora, who had been himself re-elected a deputy in the mid-term elections of
1942, was approached by businessman
Jorge Hine Saborío, who was rumored to be a potential candidate of the
right-wing opposition in the upcoming election. Hine allegedly sought Mora’s participation in a
coup d’état being planned by conservative sectors against President
Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia. Mora declined to participate, and the plot was neither carried out nor did Hine ultimately run as a candidate. At the same time, Mora and the Communist leadership were engaged in negotiations with the government and the
Catholic Church, represented by Bishop . As part of an effort to improve relations with the Church, the Communist Party formally dissolved itself and was reorganized under the name
People's Vanguard Party. When consulted by Mora regarding whether Catholics could legitimately join the new party, Sanabria reportedly stated that, having reviewed its program of government, Catholics faced no moral impediment to supporting it. The opposition nominated former president
León Cortés Castro, once a political ally and mentor of Calderón Guardia, whom he had supported during the 1940 election but with whom he later became a political adversary. Cortés’s alleged
fascist sympathies became a central issue during the campaign, particularly as Costa Rica had been officially at war with
Nazi Germany and the
Axis powers since 1941. This context probably contributed to the alignment between Calderón’s supporters and the Communists, consistent with the
Popular Front strategy promoted internationally to oppose fascism. Cortés received backing from conservative economic elites and business groups, including sectors associated with Hine, while Picado’s candidacy was supported by the popular base of
Calderonism, organized labor aligned with the Communist movement, and sectors of the Catholic Church, particularly under the leadership of Monsignor Sanabria. ==Campaign==