© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Delfina Gomez of the Movement for National Renewal (Morena), a candidate for governor of Mexico state, smiles next to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, leader of MORENA during a news conference in Mexico City, Mexico June 6, 2017. REUTERS
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By Dave Graham
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexicans were casting ballots in a state election on Sunday that appeared poised to support President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador ahead of a race to succeed him, as his party expects to seize control of the remaining stronghold of the country’s old rulers.
López Obrador’s leftist Movement for National Renewal (Morena) is expected to tighten its grip on power by adding the governor of the state of Mexico to the 21 regional governments it already controls, two-thirds of the total.
The state of Mexico, the country’s most populous region, surrounds most of the capital and has served as an economic and electoral bulwark for the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has ruled there since 1929.
López Obrador defeated the PRI to win the presidency in 2018. Morena has since absorbed most of the party’s once-dominant strongholds, as well as many politicians.
Sunday’s vote comes a year before Mexico’s next presidential election, where polls indicate the MORENA district will be hard to beat.
Decades of one-party rule have made the PR a model of corruption among many Mexicans, and it has struggled to compete with MORENA’s message that it represents a vote for change.
An opinion poll published Wednesday by Reforma newspaper showed the race narrowing, but gave Morena’s candidate Delfina Gomez a 10-percentage-point lead over Alejandra del Moral, a PRI politician facing an opposition coalition.
“People tend to Delfina because it feels like a new beginning, as it is with López Obrador,” said Jose Hernandez, a 64-year-old shopkeeper in Los Reyes Acaquilpan, a town in the eastern part of the state with a population of 17 million. “Because, in short, all (the PRI) are corrupt.”
Polling stations are scheduled to close at 6 pm (0000 GMT). The Electoral College of the state of Mexico will begin publishing the results an hour after they are in.
Gomez pledges to give the state a fresh start and improve security, addressing widespread concern about violence. Del Moral said that PRI has learned from its mistakes and that its alliance would be a broader alternative to MORENA.
Casting her vote, Del Moral told reporters that the vote was historic because for the first time a woman will be elected to govern the state. “It’s a big moment,” said the 39-year-old.
In a separate election on Sunday, the PRI is expected to hold the northern border state of Coahuila, where divisions within Morena have created two rival left-wing candidates.
race
López Obrador has dominated political life since taking office in December 2018, and his popularity, which stands at around 60%, has helped make Morena a formidable electoral machine. Under Mexican law, presidents may serve one term of six years.
However, his hard-line style and relentless agenda, which pitted the state against private enterprise, and fueled conflict with restrictions on that power such as the judiciary, polarized the electorate. In 2021, MORENA faced unexpected setbacks in the local elections.
Mexico City’s mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, has a slight lead in most polls so that the race is MORENA’s presidential candidate, closely followed by Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard.
Sheinbaum, like Gómez, the Mexico state candidate in MORENA, is closely associated with López Obrador and his policies.
Some analysts argue that the failure to capture the state of Mexico could help make the case for running a presidential candidate with more moderate qualifications like Ebrard.
Because a MORENA win has long been taken for granted, Roy Campos, head of pollster Consulta Mitofsky, said the upset would give the opposition a boost.
“For MORENA to lose this state, it basically means getting off to a really bad start to the contest in 2024,” said Campos.