Ruling Party Admits Defeat in Baja Race : Mexico’s PRI Loses First Gubernatorial Contest in 60 Years

In a historic decision, Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, which has dominated national and local politics for six decades, announced Tuesday that its candidate had been defeated in Sunday’s gubernatorial election in the northern state of Baja California.

It would be the first loss in a governor’s race in the 60-year history of the ruling party, known as the PRI.

The apparent victor in the hotly contested gubernatorial race is Ernesto Ruffo Appel, a 37-year-old, U.S.-born former mayor of Ensenada who ran under the banner of the right-of-center National Action Party, known as the PAN.

Official results will not be released until Sunday, but the PAN had already contended that Ruffo had defeated the PRI candidate, Margarita Ortega Villa.

Late Tuesday, on Mexican television, Ortega conceded defeat.

Reform Movement

The move solidifies a reform movement that was begun by President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who took office last Dec. 1, and has also resulted in a number of other bombshell announcements--notably the dumping of powerful union leaders representing oil workers and teachers, and the arrest of a one-time police official in the slaying of a prominent Mexico City journalist.

Many had still doubted Salinas’ reformist bent. But the decision in Baja would appear to add credibility to his avowed determination to liberalize the Mexican political process, long dominated by PRI.

The announcement on the Baja elections--which ended several days of speculation about the outcome of the elections--was made in Mexico City by Luis Donaldo Colosio, national chairman of the PRI.

‘Modern Party’

“The PRI is a modern party that is willing to recognize its defeat,” Colosio said, rejecting criticism that the PRI was a political dinosaur that had outlived its political usefulness.

“We live a moment of change, the winds of democracy are blowing across a good part of the world,” Colosio said.

He also claimed that the PRI was winning the mayorships of Tijuana, Mexicali and Tecate as well as 12 of the 15 legislative seats in Baja California.

The apparent PRI victory in the mayoral races will undoubtedly escalate tensions between the PRI and opposition parties.

The PAN, for its part, has maintained that it won the mayoral races in Tijuana, the state’s most populous city, as well as in Ensenada and Tecate. The PAN has acknowledged potential loss in Mexicali, the state capital and a PRI stronghold.

In the Mexican political system, governors are considered the direct representative of the president. Since the PRI was founded in 1929, every president and governor has been a member of the party.

Ruffo had declared that his triumph was the start of a “new epoch” in Mexican politics. PAN officials said gleefully that the PRI was now the opposition party in Baja California--something that is now likely to be a fact. The new governor is slated to take office on Oct. 1.

Despite spreading indictions that Ruffo had indeed triumphed, there had been considerable doubt that the PRI would recognize his victory. The PRI had already announced that Ortega had won an “indisputable” victory, and, on Monday, had declared that surveys from almost 90% of the state voting booths left Ortega with a 9% lead in the voting.

Why exactly the PRI leadership decided to acknowledge defeat remains unclear.

If the PRI leadership decided that it could not afford to lose Baja, experts said that it had several alternatives: faking the results, annuling the election because of “irregularities,” or negotiating some kind of an agreement with the PAN.

Apparently, however, the decision was made that any of those moves would be too costly, further tarnishing the party’s image both in Mexico and throughout the world, particularly the United States.

Although home to fewer than 3 million people, Baja is considered an important state for a number of reasons, including its location along the U.S.-Mexico border and its vibrant economy, which features a booming tourism trade and assembly-plant industries.

The border has always been a sensitive area for lawmakers in Mexico City, who view the northern states--traditional hotbeds of rebellion--with considerable suspicion. Adding to the suspicion is the region’s proximity to the United States, and the considerable cross-cultural contacts.

In recent years, the PAN--a 50-year-old party long frustrated in its attempts to usurp the PRI leadership--has claimed that it has been cheated out of governorships in two other border states, Chihuahua and Sonora.

Electoral fraud has long been a fact of life in Mexican politics, and the PAN said time-tested methods of fraud such as stealing ballot boxes and the use of phony voter registration documents had been well in place during Sunday’s gubernatorial race.

However, the PAN and other opposition parties had also marshalled an unprecedented “defend-the-vote” campaign, dispatching representatives to almost every one of the state’s almost 1,200 voting places. The strategy apparently paid off.

Ruffo, a plain-spoken populist, had widespread appeal throughout the state and ran a spirited campaign, despite the fact that his party contends that it was outspent more than 20 to 1 by the PRI during the tumultuous two-and-a-half month campaign.

The Baja governor’s race--the first scheduled gubernatorial contest since Salinas took office--was considered a key test of Salinas’ promises of reform.

Now, with the president’s apparent decision to concede the defeat in Baja--no one doubts that the president, who sits atop the PRI hierarchy, made the ultimate decision--it is likely that Salinas will be credited with taking a major step to make good on his pledged reforms.

Times Staff Writer Marjorie Miller, in Mexico City, contributed to this story.