With 17 million residents, Mexico State, which includes the suburbs that surround large Mexico City, tends to influence national elections, which extends well beyond the boundaries of its territory.
The massive central state that accounts for 14 percent of Mexico’s population has a significant amount of resources and is also President Enrique Pena Nieto’s main political ally.
Everyone was watching at the time of the June 4 governorship elections that featured the new left-wing party MORENA created by the late Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (aka “AMLO” locally). The fiery Former governor in Mexico City and two-time presidential candidate and the Pena Nieto-led Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
MORENA’s Delfina Gomez came within three percentage points of her rival, Alfredo del Mazo; however, she did not break through the PRI’s hold. The narrow margin, which MORENA immediately contested, set an example for the turbulent presidential elections in 2018.
Elections AMLO failed
Although the PRI was able to win the gubernatorial elections, it faced tough competition this time. The field was filled with powerful political figures like Josefina Vazquez Mota of the center-right National Action Party (which won the presidency in 2000, making Mexico the first time it had a non-PRI-led administration). And Juan Zepeda from the Revolutionary Democratic Party, which is a center-left party founded in the 1980s as an emancipation from the PRI. There were also a number of minor-party and independent candidates.
Surveys had been predicting for years an open race between Gomez, who was a former teacher, and the mayor of the city of Texcoco, in addition to del Mazo. The narrow margin of victory – and Lopez Obrador’s afterward complaints about fraud will intensify the allegations of fraud that dominated the final weeks of the campaign.
As part of the scandals that were alleged, Vazquez Mota’s family was accused of financial fraud. Gomez was suspected to have allegedly demanded payments from former staff members in order to help a local political boss, and even Obrador’s close circle was believed to have been involved in a shady transfer of money.
Josefina Vazquez-Mota, seen photographed together with former president Felipe Calderon on the campaign trail, was alleged to have committed fraud. Ginnette Riquelme/Reuters
These accusations, as well as the illegal behavior that could or might not be the cause, can erode Mexican’s confidence in the process of voting and split the electorate into winners and losers, accusers and the accused.
Still a win, sort of
Lopez Obrador, a practiced populist, has a knack for making lemonade from lemons. He could be able to capitalize on Gomez’s demise by repeating an alleged locally-based version of a national scandal that he created following his defeat as president in 2006.
For some, the months-long protest caused a split in the public and proved that he was a danger to Mexico’s democratic system, as PAN’s leadership later claimed. However, in the eyes of his base, it earned his huge approval.