A centre-left candidate named Hitler Mussolini has won a close mayor’s race in an Andean town in Peru, becoming the country’s second local leader named after the Nazi dictator.

Hitler Mussolini Simeon Flores, 45, took the mayor’s office in Queropalca with 34.54 percent of valid ballots and a 25-vote edge over his nearest rival, The Sun reported.

The race was tight. The top three finishers were separated by only 42 votes in the Andean town.

Flores ran for the centre-left Now Nation party. He manages the Simeon Sac Investment Group, according to his application form.

His nearest challenger was Gaspar Benilde Osorio Zambrano of the far-right Popular Renewal party, who finished 25 votes behind. Itala Yovana Santillan Vara of the centre-right Country for All party took third.

Flores left a right-wing party before the win

Flores had previously backed Popular Force, the right-wing party led by Keiko Fujimori. He resigned that membership in 2025 before winning Queropalca under a centre-left banner.

No campaign platform quotes from Flores appeared in the available reporting. The result turned on ballots, not speeches that made the record.

Peru has seen this name on a ballot before

Flores is not the first Peruvian local official to carry the Hitler name into office.

In 2018, Hitler Alba Sanchez won the mayor’s race in Yungar, in Carhuaz province, with 47.7 percent of the vote. His opponent was Lennin Vladimir Rodriguez Valverde. Coverage at the time tagged the contest “Hitler vs Lenin.”

Reporting on Sanchez said his father chose the name without grasping who Adolf Hitler was. That explanation attached to the earlier race, not to Flores.

Outside Peru, Adolf Hitler Uunona won a local council seat in Namibia in 2020. He later shortened the name and won again in 2025 as Adolf Uunona, his fifth election victory under the revised version.

Voters decided a small-margin race

Queropalca’s contest stayed local and narrow. Flores cleared the field with a plurality, not a landslide. Twenty-five votes separated first from second. Forty-two votes covered the top three.

Party labels spanned the spectrum: centre-left for the winner, far-right for the runner-up, centre-right for third place. Flores’s own path ran from Popular Force to Now Nation in the same year he quit the former.

The historical names on the ballot grab attention. The certified margin was still a handful of votes in a small Andean town.

Strange names travel far on a headline. Local voters still settle the job the old way, one ballot at a time.