Mexican Cancels Campaign Trip to Los Angeles

Mexico’s leading presidential contender Tuesday canceled plans to woo expatriate voters at a Mexican Independence Day event in Los Angeles, after the federal election authority said the appearance could violate Mexican campaign rules.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who resigned as mayor of Mexico City in July to campaign full time, was surprised by the opinion, and at first appeared ready to defy the Federal Electoral Institute, which can fine or disqualify him.

At stake was a chance to address as many as 100,000 Mexicans expected to gather Thursday night in Huntington Park to kick off the Independence Day celebration. Mexicans living abroad will be eligible for the first time to cast ballots by mail in the July 2006 presidential election.

Lopez Obrador had scheduled a private meeting Thursday with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and an afternoon news conference that probably would have dominated Spanish-language radio and TV news on the eve of Independence Day, Sept. 16.

He had planned to end his first visit to California late Thursday at Salt Lake Park, where tens of thousands gather annually to reenact “El Grito,” the ceremonial cry that urged Mexicans to revolt against their European rulers in 1810.

It is unknown how many of the estimated 10 million Mexicans in the United States will vote in the 2006 election. But those living in Southern California are considered power brokers because of their large numbers and influence on family members in Mexico, who collectively receive billions of dollars a year in remittances from them. Telephone calls from abroad may have more effect than any campaign exhortations in Mexico, analysts say.

Throughout Tuesday, it was not certain whether the politically feisty Lopez Obrador would comply with the electoral opinion. Advisors in his left-leaning Democratic Revolutionary Party ultimately convinced him it was not worth risking his candidacy, particularly since he leads in polls.

As mayor this year, Lopez Obrador survived a criminal accusation of abuse of power, and the stripping of his immunity by Congress -- a battle that could have cost him his right to run for the presidency, yet that boosted his popularity.

“He doesn’t want to take a risk,” said Manuel Camacho Solis, a PRD congressman and campaign advisor. “He’s doing so well, why get into a big disagreement.”

The political scuffle did not play well north of the border. Mexicans in Los Angeles who were disappointed over the canceled visit said it seemed foolish to give them the right to vote, but not the right to see and hear candidates. A sense of disenfranchisement, they said, was partly what drove them to the U.S.

“For us, it’s the same kind of politics that we left behind,” said Jose Medina, a community organizer in Huntington Park. The electoral institute, he added, “is acting like la migra [immigration enforcement]. They’re not giving a visa for him to cross the border. They are building more borders instead of opening them.”

Late Monday, the electoral institute said in a statement that until it released its revised campaign rules this month, no presidential contender should campaign outside Mexico.

The institute had given a green light to the Lopez Obrador visit, Camacho Solis said. But in response to a letter, the electoral institute said Lopez Obrador’s planned activities in Los Angeles looked like campaigning.

Lopez Obrador’s campaign argued the former mayor is not yet an official party candidate, and was going to L.A. as a private citizen.

The back-and-forth illustrates some of Mexico’s struggle with democracy. Until 2000, the presidency was held for 71 years by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

President Vicente Fox, who took office on his National Action Party’s platform of change, pushed to give the vote to expatriates, who may account for as much as a sixth of the electorate.

Fox cannot run again because the Mexican Constitution does not allow for reelection for any public office. The president serves for one six-year term.

Representatives of Fox’s National Action Party visited Los Angeles last month without their presidential candidate. A spokesman for PRI front-runner Roberto Madrazo said Tuesday that Madrazo also would visit, if the electoral institute resolved the debate over its rules.

Camacho Solis said Tuesday that he planned to participate in Huntington Park’s El Grito in place of Lopez Obrador.

“A lot of people wanted to see him,” he said. “I expected 100,000 people chanting his name.”

Times researcher Cecilia Sanchez in The Times’ Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.