San Lorenzo Presidential Race

The San Lorenzo Presidential Race is a Confrontation in the television series Leverage that takes place in Episode 16 of Season 3, The San Lorenzo Job.

Context

After Nate framed him in the previous episode, Moreau fled to the San Lorenzo, a small country with no extradition treaties and whose corrupt president is in Moreau's pocket. The Leverage team follows Moreau to San Lorenzo with the goal of taking him down.

Players

• Leverage team and allies:
  • Nathan Ford
  • Sophie Deveraux
  • Eliot Spenser
  • Parker
  • Alec Hardison
  • Lawrence Flores
  • The Italian
• Michael Vittori
• Damien Moreau
• Government of San Lorenzo:
  • Edwin Ribera

Tricks

• Nate asks the Italian to provide the team with new identities and visas to get them into San Lorenzo.
• Nate assumes the identity of election consultant James Draper and offers his services in the upcoming elections to Michael Vittori, the only remaining candidate in president Edwin Ribera's opposition who wasn't imprisoned.
• Nate organizes a press conference for Vittori in order to buy time for Eliot and Parker to find general Lawrence Flores, who was imprisoned underground by Ribera and Moreau.
• Sophie pretends to be Vittori's fiancée when the press sees them together, using her charm to win the hearts of the people.
• Eliot and Parker send a plastic bag with a phone inside up the pipes to the toilet in Flores' cell, so the team can communicate with him.
• Nate convinces Moreau to leave them alone until the end of the elections by bluffing that Hardison has hacked into the cameras in the parliament building and threatening to send the footage to Interpol.
• The team begins a smear campaign against Ribera:
  • Hardison designs a political ad combining all the most successful strategies in American politics and sends it to the emails of every person in the country.
  • Eliot gives a TV interview claiming that dog fights are organized in the presidential palace.
• Moreau uses his influence with the news network to obtain the questions of the presidential debate in advance and make sure all the easy questions go to Rivera.
• The team steals Rivera's watch and put nicotine cream on it before returning it to him. This causes Rivera to sweat and look nervous during the debate, making it seem like he has been drinking.
• Sophie teaches Vittori a trick for capturing the audience's favor when speaking in public: offer them two options where the choice is obvious, prompting them to subconsciously get on your side. He uses the trick to win the debate.
• Moreau and Ribera decide to send a hitman posing as a bodyguard to escort and assassinate Vittori.
• The team creates the public impression that Vittori's victory has been decided:
  • Flores uses the cellphone the team smuggled him to call the media and say that he is being released.
  • Hardison sends an email to the people of San Lorenzo announcing Vittori's victory.
• Hardison and Eliot take the place of two of the guards being sent by Ribera to the underground prison to execute Flores. They knock the other two guards out and rescue him and his allies.
• Eliot and Flores fake Sophie's assassination in front of the cameras, prompting Vittori to announce his victory and rally the people against Ribera.
• Nate convinces Ribera to sign an arrest warrant for Moreau and resign, since even if Ribera has won the election, at this point his victory will look like a fix and he will have the people and the international community against him. On the other hand, if he arrests Moreau as his last act as president, he can use the laws of San Lorenzo saying that political prisoners have all their property seized to take Moreau's villa and retire.

Outcome

Winners

• The Leverage team
• The Italian
• Michael Vittori
• Lawrence Flores
• Edwin Ribera (compromise)

Losers

• Damien Moreau