By Alexandra Valencia
QUITO (Reuters) - Her deep admiration for Ecuador's former President Rafael Correa inspired lawyer Luisa Gonzalez to work for his government. Now she is the best hope of returning his Citizens' Revolution party to power.
The 45-year-old Gonzalez has channeled many voters' longing for a return of Correa's social spending into a lead at the ballot box, where she won 34% of the vote in an August first round, though polling points to a tight second-round contest.
She faces businessman Daniel Noboa, heir to a banana empire, in the second round on Sunday.
The campaign has been marked by Ecuador's spiraling security situation, with violence and threats against candidates culminating in the murder of anti-corruption candidate Fernando Villavicencio.
Suspects jailed in the case were subsequently also killed.
Gonzalez first met Correa - who she has called "a man touched by the grace of God" - at a government event in the Andean city of Riobamba.
She later applied for a job at the presidency and was accepted in 2008, going on to lead two government secretariats and elected to the legislature in 2021.
Correa, who governed between 2007 and 2017 and now lives in Belgium, was sentenced in 2020 to eight years in prison on corruption charges he says are political persecution.
Gonzalez has said that if elected she would not pardon him. But he would her top economic adviser, she has said.
"The only possibility of bringing back our winning decade and continuing to advance the country is for Mashi to return to power," said Octavio Flores, a 60-year-old businessman, using Correa's Quechua nickname. "That's why we have to start with Luisa Gonzalez as president."
Gonzalez, who describes herself as a single mother, animal lover and athlete, would be Ecuador's first female president. An evangelical Christian, she has said she always carries a Bible in her briefcase and sports religious tattoos.
She has campaigned on increasing social spending and promised to better equip security forces, improve intelligence systems, and bring prisons, ports and airports under control with military assistance.
Correa describes her as a "general" who will win the war against drug-trafficking.
Gonzalez told Reuters in August she would use $2.5 billion from Ecuador's international reserves to support the economy.
"We have the knowledge, the experience, the maturity, and above all love for our homeland, love for our people," Gonzalez said in a social media video. "We have an Ecuador on its knees, we are going to put on its feet."