Mexico Gears Up for a Lively Campaign : Elections: Actors, journalists, even former showgirls will be running for Congress. It was once the domain of career politicians.

The next Mexican Congress may look more like a roadshow than a legislative body, newspapers here predicted Friday after political parties nominated an unprecedented number of actors, soccer players, Olympic medalists, television anchors and former showgirls for seats in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies.

National elections are traditionally the province of career politicians, who often lack sparkle and instant name recognition. But the congressional elections in August promise to be more lively. Friday’s newspapers were filled with press conferences kicking off the campaigns of several icons of popular culture, many of them more often seen as entertainers at cockfights than as political crusaders.

A cartoon in the feisty newspaper La Jornada showed a politician looking through a guide to TV programming and saying, “Well, each party chooses its candidates the way it wants, doesn’t it?”

Parties have been so eager to sign up well-known names that one entertainer found herself on two different tickets by mistake. Because of some confusion--not unexpected, with 10 parties seeking candidates--Irma Serrano registered to run for a party she had meant to turn down.

With the error corrected, Serrano--a performer known as “The Tigress,” who retired from show business eight months ago after publishing an autobiography that featured details of her affair with then-Mexican President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz--is running for the Senate for a small opposition party.

Silvia Pinal, a popular actress and wife of a former governor, will try to win the Bohemian district of Coyoacan--now represented by the opposition--for the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI. Another PRI candidate for deputy in Mexico City is Olympic champion swimmer Felipe Munoz.

The Party of the Authentic Mexican Revolution will be running a boxer, Octavio Gomez.

The presence of such candidates may bring voters to the polls, but political observers are concerned about how effective they will be as legislators in a Congress that in all likelihood will vote on Mexico’s participation in a pending North American free-trade agreement.

In addition, the focus on popular personalities may be shifting attention from another significant change--the increased number of entrepreneurs and the decreased number of union leaders on PRI ballots. The celebrities also have provided a distraction from grass-roots party activists’ protests about the candidate selection process.

PRI officials have played down the importance of popular figures among their candidates.

“This is simply a reaffirmation of the plurality of our party,” said Javier Aguirre, press spokesman for the PRI. “This is not the first time actors have run as PRI candidates. They are members of a union that is affiliated with the party.”

For example, Julio Aleman--usually cast as the romantic lead in Mexican films--is president of the actors union and a candidate for deputy from a Mexico City district.

“We have not changed our strategy,” Aguirre said. “Our strategy is to win, and to do that, we are running our best men.”

An occasional entertainer or athlete on the ballot is not unusual, said Roderic Ai Camp, chairman of the political science department at Central College in Pella, Iowa, and author of a collection of short biographies that are a who’s who of Mexico.

“A well-known singer has more name recognition than the typical politician,” he explained.

What political observers find worrisome is the popular candidates who have little political experience.

“The Tigress’ only political participation was being the president’s mistress,” said Carlos Ramirez, economics editor at the financial newspaper El Financiero.

Serrano, Senate candidate for the southern state of Chiapas, rejects that argument.

“I have always spoken out politically,” she said.

Ramirez, however, is concerned that Serrano’s small party with its jawbreaker name, known by the initials PFCRN, is merely creating a sideshow to distract voters from the serious opposition to the PRI.

The PFCRN’s Senate candidate for the state of Guanajuato is Antonio Carbajal, the only Mexican to play goalie in five World Cup soccer matches. Pedro Ferriz, a television anchor and authority on UFOs, will run for the party’s Senate seat from Mexico City.

“He’ll probably want extraterrestrial observers,” joked one pundit.