FEJER COUNTY, Hungary-- "Do you want to take a picture with him?" a woman asks her partner. There is already a crowd in Dunaujvaros, an industrial city in central Hungary, and an orderly line of people are waiting to see Peter Magyar, the new star of the Hungarian opposition.
Out on the campaign trail ahead of Hungary's June 9 local and European Parliament elections, it takes Magyar a few minutes to reach the small stage. He walks slowly, pausing to greet the crowd while receiving warm hugs and pats on the shoulder.
The 43-year-old is an unlikely opposition candidate.
A longtime political insider in the ruling Fidesz party, he has served in the Foreign Ministry and in Hungary's permanent representation to the European Union. Until 2023, he was married to Judit Varga, a prominent Fidesz member and the former justice minister.
His star began to rise in February when his ex-wife became embroiled in a case in which a man was pardoned after being found guilty of being an accomplice in a case involving child sexual assault.
The scandal claimed the political scalps of the president, Katalin Novak, and Varga, who announced that she was retiring from political life.
Magyar seized the moment, publishing a scathing Facebook post about the scandal and those involved, accusing the government of corruption and smearing its opponents. Doubling down, he then published a recorded conversation with his former spouse, in which Varga appeared to discuss a plan by the staff of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's cabinet chief to meddle in a corruption investigation.
For many in Fejer County, one of the most developed and industrial areas in Hungary, the boyish-looking Magyar is a breath of fresh air. His new Respect And Freedom (Tisza) party is pledging to fight corruption, revitalize public services, and address Hungary's stultifying brain drain.
On stage, his performance is polished and seemingly well-rehearsed. He is dressed in the uniform of Fidesz: a tight, but not too tight, white shirt and white sneakers. But there are also little personal touches: rosary beads with a wooden cross hanging from his wrist, something you would normally see on an elderly person or a nun.
Well-versed in the brand of populism that has sustained Fidesz for 14 years, Magyar knows exactly how to work the crowd. His language is carefully vague and sometimes a little loose with the facts.
"We can't get everything back, but we can get some of it back.... Step by step, brick by brick, we're taking the country back," he says.
In every place Magyar visits, he brings up the local grievances -- the broken promises on bypasses and hospitals -- and this goes down well with the crowd, with some locals angrily cursing those in power.
He mocks the Fidesz government's plan to send a Hungarian into space: "I suggest that before we start building a launchpad in [Orban's hometown of] Felcsut, we start small. Let's get to the level of Romania so we can have disinfectants in hospitals and soap in schools."
Sometimes Magyar's solutions sound a little too good to be true. He mentions Istvan Tiborcz, a prominent Hungarian businessman who is also married to one of Orban's daughters. After accruing a fortune by the age of 36, Tiborcz's business activities have attracted the attention of the European Anti-Fraud Office. If he were in power, Magyar says, Tiborcz would "receive a letter from the NAV (National Tax and Customs Administration) to pay 400-500 billion [forints] in tax debts, plus the interest, within 15 days."
In an interview in Pusztaszabolcs, a small city in Fejer County, I ask him about corruption, saying that Hungarians have learned to live with it since the era of Janos Kadar, Hungary's longtime communist leader.
"Forty trillion forints came here from the EU," he tells me, "but there is no money for toilet paper in the hospital, or there are not enough doctors and nurses, because these funds simply disappear."
Magyar also wants talk about Hungarian foreign policy, an area where he has professional experience from his time in Brussels. There are aspects of EU policy where he agrees with the government, he tells me, "even if the left-wing opposition doesn't like it."
Hungary under Orban has had a famously combative relationship with the European Union, which it joined in 2004.
Brussels and Budapest have repeatedly locked horns over immigration, judicial independence, and the rule of law.
Magyar says he believes in a strong Europe based on strong nation-states. What Hungary should do, he says, is have a normal relationship with the EU but still remain critical. The difference to Fidesz, Magyar suggests, is that he would not only "argue with it for domestic political purposes...but would formulate a substantive critique. Because Europe is currently shooting itself in the foot, either in industrial policy or in environmental protection policy."
During our brief conversation, he also addresses the right-wing Orban's alleged friendships with the Russian, Chinese, and Turkish leaders, along with former U.S. President Donald Trump. These ties, he says, "should not be overestimated."
"It [shouldn't be] a problem if such a country, located between East and West, tries to establish good relations with the great powers of the world," he says. However, he adds, it's a problem if these relationships can't be converted into economic benefits.
"Diplomacy -- something that the prime minister does not usually use or like -- is about arranging things behind closed doors and not banging on the table with his shoes," he says, referring to an incident in 1960 when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev is rumored to have pounded his shoe on his desk at the UN General Assembly.
There are also enough salacious tidbits from his time spent in the heart of the Fidesz to keep his supporters interested. While Magyar was out on the campaign trail, Orban was quoted in an interview with Blikk, a popular daily tabloid, as saying that he had only ever spoken a couple of sentences to Magyar.
The new opposition challenger was quick to respond.
"Don't you remember, Mr. Prime Minister, when we played Romany music all night, and then you got into the car after drinking half a liter or a bottle of wine?" he said.
That night, according to Magyar, he even managed to spill some red wine on Orban's shirt.
These types of details are catnip for the supporters of Hungary's opposition. With Magyar, there is always the implicit and tantalizing promise of more: that, if he wanted, he could blow the whole Fidesz system apart.
And therein lies the contradiction of Magyar. While he is happy to milk his role as a political insider -- "I know them, I know the system, the tactics, the propaganda," he told Euronews recently -- he also tries to downplay his role inside the Fidesz machine.
This leads to inevitable questions about his sincerity. There are concerns that he is just an opportunist, exploiting his connections to Fidesz but ultimately cut from the same cloth. His image is also tainted by allegations from his ex-wife Varga that, during their marriage, Magyar was physically and verbally abusive, allegations he denies.
More conspiratorial Hungarians believe Magyar's rise is all part of a dastardly Fidesz plan: merely a plant, a superficial change of the opposition guard, designed to let disgruntled citizens blow off a little steam.
The big question is whether Magyar's support in places like Fejer County can translate into votes nationwide. In a survey conducted at the end of April by Budapest-based pollster Median, Magyar's Tisza Party was supported by 24 percent of people voting in the European Parliament elections, making it the strongest opposition party. Fidesz, however, will be hard to beat. Deeply entrenched in power and with a strong grip on Hungary's media, the ruling party garnered 46 percent in the same poll.
In Dunaujvaros, I speak to several people at the rally who are supporters of one of the main opposition parties: the left-wing Democratic Coalition (DK). One of them says that a mix of Klara Dobrev, a leading DK figure, and Magyar would be good. When I asked how the two politicians compared, the man was clear: "Magyar's] more credible, he sees things in a better way."
For now, at his well-attended rallies, most people seem satisfied with what they hear from Magyar.
"He pulled people out of their armchairs," says an elderly lady, who had been an active member of Hungary's opposition for years.
Another elderly woman and her daughter tell me that they have never been to a political rally before.
And why now, I ask? "We want change."
