Three months ago, Rodrigo Paz was a little-known Bolivian opposition senator with a famous father and a mixed reputation as mayor. Now he’s the first conservative to win a presidential election in the country in 20 years.

To widespread surprise, the centrist Paz, 58, beat out his far more prominent right-wing opponent, former President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, to clinch a victory in Bolivia's presidential runoff on Sunday. He becomes Bolivia’s next head of state on Nov. 8.

The senator inherits an economy in shambles after 20 years of rule by the Movement Toward Socialism party, founded by charismatic former President Evo Morales (in office 2006-2019).

The party had its heyday during the commodities boom of the early 2000s, but natural gas exports have sputtered and its statist economic model of generous subsidies and a fixed exchange rate has since collapsed.

Crippled by a shortage of U.S. dollars and fuel shortages that leave them waiting days in queues, voters across the country on Sunday chose Paz to lift them out of their worst economic crisis in four decades.

Paz pitched major reforms but at a more gradual pace than Quiroga, who advocated relying on an International Monetary Fund bailout and fiscal shock program.