DECISION IN MEXICO : Results Draw Range of Responses in U.S. : Reaction: Comments from Clinton Administration are cautious. Expatriates are passionately divided.

Although the Clinton Administration took a cautious approach Monday to commenting on Mexico’s partial election results, Mexican expatriates in Southern California offered passionate, conflicting views about the claim by Ernesto Zedillo, the ruling party’s candidate, of a presidential victory.

A group called Hispanics for Zedillo, for example, convened a news conference at UCLA’s Westwood campus to laud what they termed true democracy at work.

“This shows the maturing of the Mexican political system,” said an exultant Eddie Varon, a Los Angles-based activist for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which nominated Zedillo as president. “We won it fairly.”

But across town at his Eastside tortilleria, Jesus Cardenas was contemplating a strategy to protest what he and allies called electoral chicanery.

“It was fraud as usual,” complained Cardenas, a supporter of the Democratic Revolutionary Party--whose candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas (no relation), was finishing a distant third in preliminary returns. “The government party wants to impose another president.”

In Washington, the Administration said Monday that it was too early to say whether Mexico’s election was free and fair, although one official described it as “peaceful . . . in spite of some irregularities.”

Although Zedillo has claimed victory on the basis of partial returns, State Department spokeswoman Christine Shelly said Washington would not comment on the results until more votes were officially counted.

Still, it seemed clear that the Administration is prepared to work closely with Zedillo, a Yale-educated economist. Before the voting, a senior Administration official said that Washington expected a cooperative relationship regardless of which of the three top candidates won.

While insisting the United States had no favorite among the candidates, Shelly said the Administration was very concerned about the fairness of the balloting.

“Mexican electoral law provides for redress of voting irregularities, and we certainly would expect that all credible charges of this kind, including if there were any raised about fraud, that they would certainly be very fully adjudicated under that system,” she said.

In Los Angeles, and elsewhere in California, there was ample evidence Monday of the passions unleashed by Sunday’s watershed national elections.

The intense interest, and the different factions that have developed in Southern California among Mexican expatriates, are an indication of the region’s diversity. Los Angeles County, with perhaps 3 million people of Mexican ancestry, boasts the largest such population outside Mexico.

In recent years, Mexican politicians have made strong overtures to Mexican nationals in the United States, whose remittances home and other expenditures in Mexico are a crucial source of foreign currency. PRI officials have traveled here often, and Cardenas has made many trips to Los Angeles, most recently this spring.

The North American Free Trade Agreement, which took effect in January, has further served to bolster cross-border ties.

And some in Mexico have called for amending electoral laws to allow Mexicans abroad to cast absentee ballots at consulates, a practice that could create a huge new voting bloc.

Many Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans stayed up until early Monday to watch Spanish-language television for results. Others returned to vote in Mexico, where special booths were available for the few expatriates with proper credentials.

Others, such as Salvador Rizzo, a Mexican native who is a 22-year resident of Los Angeles, traveled to Mexico to observe the process firsthand.

Rizzo, who heads the California chapter of the Democratic Revolutionary Party, said he was appalled that thousands of citizens nationwide were turned away because some voting booths ran out of ballots.

He and other PRI opponents denounced Monday’s results--and what they termed Zedillo’s premature claim of victory--during an event held outside the Mexican Consulate across from MacArthur Park in Los Angeles.

“I’ve never heard of anyone being turned away from voting in the United States because of a lack of ballots,” noted Virginia Reade Belmontez, a Mexican American and Cardenas supporter.

Also disappointed were supporters of Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, the National Action Party (PAN) candidate who appeared to be the second-place finisher.

“The people of Mexico want a change, and this is just more of the same,” said Socorro Magana, a Mexican native and longtime U.S. resident who described herself as a former PRI supporter turned PAN backer.

“This means Mexico will have the same poverty, the same problems, the same corruption as ever, and so many of our people will have to continue coming north to find work,” she said.

McDonnell reported from Los Angeles and Kempster from Washington.