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 Editorials | At Issue | June 2006 
Mexico Election Could Alter Voting Divide
 Will Weissert - Associated Press
| | The July 2 presidential election could redraw the political map. |
Mexico's north is mostly wealthy, religious and conservative. Revolutionary politics and poverty influence the south. In between in Mexico City, many consider themselves socially progressive.
In Mexico, as in much of the world, how you vote often depends on where you live. But the July 2 presidential election could redraw the political map.
The race is neck-and-neck between leftist former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, of the Democratic Revolution party, and Felipe Calderon, a pro-business former energy secretary from outgoing President Vicente Fox's conservative National Action Party.
The wild card could be Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years until its stunning loss to Fox six years ago. PRI candidate Roberto Madrazo is running third in the polls. Still, the PRI remains the only party with a well-developed infrastructure in every region of Mexico.
Calderon, a devout Roman Catholic, champions foreign investment, family values and globalization. He figures to do well in the north, where National Action has been on the rise since its first major victory in Baja California state in 1989.
"People here work and don't wait for the government to help them," said Gabriela Zamora, a sociology student who lives outside Monterrey, an industrial hub 155 miles from the Texas border. "We see (National Action) as more hardworking and less corrupt than other parties."
Yet National Action's rivals have been chipping away at its stronghold.
Monterrey and the surrounding state of Nuevo Leon recently kicked National Action out of the governor's office and brought back the PRI — as did the state of Chihuahua and the two biggest border cities, Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez.
The north, once the PRI's weak point, may now be its strength.
Lopez Obrador's party, which won less than 10 percent of the vote in 10 northern states in the 2000 election, has established a northern base by taking advantage of splits in the PRI.
Democratic Revolution recruited popular but disgruntled PRI leaders who led Lopez Obrador's party to the governorship of two northern states, including Zacatecas, a hotbed of migration to the United States. The former Mexico City mayor's popularity gives his party a chance to expand further.
The PRI, meanwhile, could see its base in the underdeveloped south erode further as its rivals seek to build a national operation like the once-dominant party's disappearing electoral machine.
Lopez Obrador began his campaign with a rally in Metlatonoc, a southwestern mountain town with the lowest standard of living in Mexico. He has made improving the plight of the 50 million impoverished Mexicans his main campaign promise, and polls show him leading in the south.
Still, 17 of the country's 31 governors are from the PRI, and they are capable of mobilizing millions of voters for Madrazo.
Mexico City has been a Democratic Revolution bastion since 1988, when fraud allegedly kept candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas from taking the party to the presidency. City subsidies for single mothers and the elderly and massive public works projects to ease traffic helped make Lopez Obrador a popular mayor, despite rising crime rates.
"All candidates talk, but Lopez Obrador delivers," said Ernesto Reyes, a Mexico City clothing store manager.
But Mexico State, which nearly encircles the capital, is a politically volatile region that elects PRI governors but backed Fox in 2000 and Cardenas in 1988.
Roberto Gomez, a 58-year-old judge in the state capital of Toluca and former head of the PRI's state youth movement, said he will vote for Lopez Obrador — not Madrazo — because he's the only viable rival to Calderon.
"With Calderon, we'd be stuck in the same situation as with Fox, favoring the rich and slowing social development," he said.
Further south, the PRI machine remains strong but is under siege. A coalition of the Democratic Revolution and National Action parties governs the former PRI bastion of Chiapas. Yucatan and Morelos states have both gone for National Action. Lopez Obrador's party holds Guerrero, home to the resort city of Acapulco.
"A lot of people like his image, the figure of Lopez Obrador," said Mario Mendez, editor of Yucatan state's Por Esto newspaper. "A weak party makes it hard, though."
On the Net: Federal Electoral Institute: http://www.ife.org.mx |
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