Key Yucatan vote is a close contest

Mexico’s main opposition party claimed victory over President Felipe Calderon’s conservatives in the main contest Sunday as voters in the southern state of Yucatan launched the 2010 election season.

Early returns showed a tight race for the mayor’s seat in Merida, the state capital. The two parties were nearly even with about a fifth of the votes counted.

But Beatriz Paredes, president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, called Angelica Araujo’s lead in exit polls “irreversible.”

One exit poll, prepared for Milenio television, showed Araujo with about 51% — or 14 percentage points more than Beatriz Zavala, candidate of Calderon’s National Action Party, or PAN. Eduardo Sobrino of the left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, was a distant third.

Yucatan, with 106 mayoralties and 25 state legislative seats up for grabs, was the first of 15 Mexican states to hold elections this year for state and local offices. The remaining elections, including 12 for the powerful position of governor, take place July 4.

In Yucatan, the race for mayor in the colonial city of Merida was the top prize in Sunday’s balloting, and a key test for Calderon’s PAN.

The city has favored the PAN for two decades, but preelection polls had given a healthy edge to Araujo and the surging PRI, which recaptured the governor’s office three years ago.

As the campaign drew to a bitter close, PAN leaders accused PRI Gov. Ivonne Ortega of seeking to throw the election to Araujo. The PRI denied the charges and, in turn, accused the PAN of sending teams of agents provocateurs to stir trouble on voting day.

Balloting appeared on the whole peaceful, despite charges by both sides of dirty tactics.

The PAN likely faces an uphill struggle in the remaining election season. Nine of the 12 states picking governors are already held by the PRI, giving the party’s candidates an important edge. Two of those states are now controlled by the PAN and one is ruled by the leftist PRD.

In an effort to break the PRI’s long-standing hold in certain states, the PAN had joined hands with leftist parties. But early polls show the PRI holding its own even in those states, paving the way for a possible near-sweep this year.

As Yucatan voters headed to the polls, former PAN presidential candidate Diego Fernandez de Cevallos remained missing for a second day.

Federal authorities announced no new leads in the search for the 69-year-old lawyer, who vanished Friday night. Fernandez de Cevallos’ empty vehicle was found near his ranch amid traces of blood in the central state of Queretaro.

Local media reports were calling the case a kidnapping, but Ricardo Najera, spokesman for the federal attorney general’s office, said it was still being treated as a disappearance.

Fernandez de Cevallos was the PAN candidate in 1994, six years before the party succeeded in breaking the PRI’s seven-decade hold on the presidency. He also served as congressman and senator, and in recent years remained a powerful force within the party.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com