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 Editorials | At Issue | May 2006 
Is U.S. Shaping Mexican Presidential Campaign?
 Alfredo Corchado & Laurence Iliff - Dallas Morning News
| | National Action Party (PAN) candidate Felipe Calderon hoists a baby during a campaign stop in Tehuacan, Mexico, last month. (Joel Merino/AP) |
Conservative Felipe Calderón opened his campaign for president with slogans focusing on honesty ("Clean Hands") and patriotism ("Passion for Mexico"), but the nice-guy image wasn't working.
So the Harvard-educated lawyer embraced a U.S. style of political attacks against his top rival. He even spoke — informally, his campaign insists — with American consultants such as Bill Clinton adviser Dick Morris and Dallas' Rob Allyn, a Republican strategist.
Whether the consultants had anything to do with the change in tactics, no one will say, given Mexico's extreme sensitivity to any appearance of outside influence in elections. But some critics are blaming the gringos for Mexico's plunge into the mud.
Regardless of where the blame — or credit — lies, the strategy is working. It helped revive Calderón's once-moribund efforts and put him — to the shock of many pundits — in first place in recent newspaper polls, the first time he has led. The election is July 2.
But the lead enjoyed by Mexico's ruling-party presidential candidate has narrowed to four percentage points, a new poll showed Wednesday, after his leftist rival launched an aggressive new media campaign.
Reforma newspaper's closely watched poll gave Calderón the support of 39 percent of probable voters, while Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, a left-wing former Mexico City mayor, had 35 percent support.
In the poll, Lopez Obrador, who promises to help Mexico's poor if elected, gained two percentage points, while Calderón slipped by 1 point. In third place, main opposition party candidate Roberto Madrazo was unchanged with 22 percent.
Wednesday's poll questioned 2,099 registered voters across Mexico between May 19-21. It has a margin of error of 2.3 percentage points.
"Negative ads are a new phenomenon in Mexican democracy," said Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, director of the Mexico Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington research organization.
Calderón began his turnaround with a TV ad whose impact some analysts compared to the "swift boat" commercials that bedeviled Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004.
It equated Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, then the front-runner, with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in terms of "intolerance" and zeroed in on Lopez Obrador repeating the phrase, "Shut up, Mr. President. ... Shut up, you country hen." He was referring to popular President Vicente Fox.
Ads that followed called Lopez Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor, "a danger to Mexico."
Whether Morris or Allyn was involved with the decision to go negative is unclear, but critics agree the inspiration is American. They describe foreign consultants as toxic imports, cynical spinmeisters who manipulate the public with half-truths.
In an e-mail, Morris, asked to deny or confirm involvement in the Calderón campaign, said only, "No thanks."
Allyn of Allyn & Co. also declined to comment.
Aides to each man said on condition of anonymity that both consultants have played informal roles.
A spokesman for Calderón defended use of the ads.
"This ain't a Boy Scout convention. We're out to win," said Arturo Sarukhan, Calderón's top foreign affairs adviser. "Our ability to capitalize on (Lopez Obrador's) mistakes has provided us with an advantage and momentum."
What is critical, Sarukhan said, is contrasting the visions of two candidates who differ sharply on several key issues, including the country's relationship with the United States, a major trading partner and leading importer of Mexican oil.
"Felipe Calderón has proposals to push the relationship forward," Sarukhan said. "Lopez Obrador will either push the relationship sideways or backwards."
But since losing his long-held lead, Lopez Obrador has started giving more media interviews and responding to Calderón's attacks by questioning his legislative record and calling him a liar.
He has also hurt Calderón by alleging that President Vicente Fox has improperly supported the conservative's campaign.
Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute, the country's top election body, recently told Fox to stop broadcasting television and radio advertisements praising government public works and welfare programs.
Lopez Obrador, who rarely grants interviews, has maintained that he has no intention of shifting the country's market economy to aid the poor, or altering the relationship with the United States.
Mexico has acute sensitivities when it comes to even a hint of foreign influence in its internal affairs, particularly elections.
In 2000, after Fox was declared the winner of the election, Allyn conceded in interviews with The Dallas Morning News that he had led a double life for nearly three years: He traveled to Mexico under pseudonyms, checking into hotels using such names as Alberto Aguirre and Jose de Murga, to advise Fox on polling, wardrobe and speeches. He helped the former Coca-Cola executive-turned-rancher craft his message of change, as well as his TV ads.
Calderón is not alone in talking with foreign consultants.
Madrazo, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, shopped around for foreign consultants, talking to several, including James Taylor of ViaNovo, which is based in Austin, Texas, and has offices in Monterrey, Mexico.
"We did have a meeting, and we decided not to participate," said Taylor, formerly of Austin-based Public Strategies Inc., or PSI. Taylor advises Nuevo Leon Gov. Jose Natividad Gonzalez Paras, a member of the PRI.
Aides to Madrazo, a former Tabasco governor, said he is receiving advice from Alex Castellanos, a longtime Washington-based GOP consultant. Castellanos did not return calls to his office.
For more than a year, Lopez Obrador, of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, enjoyed a 10-point lead in the polls. With three major political parties slicing up the vote, any edge could make the difference, analysts say.
"We look at other campaigns and strategies that can be applied domestically in Mexico," said Sarukhan of the Calderón camp. "We have talked to certain people not just in the United States, but also in Western Europe and Latin America. I'll leave it at that."
Lopez Obrador, meanwhile, insisted that the new tactics aren't hurting him.
"In spite of inflammatory remarks and campaign lies," he said in campaign literature, "I'm still ahead."
Some observers fear a close election result will not be accepted by supporters of the rival candidates and could lead to unrest after the election.
Information on the latest poll was reported by Reuters. |
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