Vote in Mexico Validates PRI Reformers

In state elections that could foreshadow the 2000 presidential race, Mexico’s long-dominant party appeared headed for victories Sunday in two of three gubernatorial races--but was losing a third state where it had refused to accept electoral reforms, according to exit polls.

Voter surveys by Mexico’s two major broadcast networks showed the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, winning by 5 percentage points in northern Chihuahua state, where the party had chosen its candidate, charismatic entrepreneur Patricio Martinez, in an unprecedented open-party primary.

However, in Zacatecas state, exit polls showed the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, leading by 4% to 5% over the PRI. A victory would give the PRD its first governorship and its first major electoral inroad north of Mexico City.

The PRD’s candidate in Zacatecas, Ricardo Monreal, had defected from the PRI to the PRD in January after the PRI leadership handed the nomination to party insider Jose Olvera Acevedo rather than hold a primary.

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In Durango, the third northern state holding elections Sunday, the PRI was projected to have a strong lead in its bid to hold onto the state, a longtime PRI stronghold.

The exit polls had margins of error of 5%, which left the Chihuahua and Zacatecas races statistically close. The parties released polls favoring their own candidates. Official results were expected early today.

The combined results of a PRI victory in Chihuahua and Durango and a loss in Zacatecas would be powerful ammunition for reformers within the PRI, who have argued that recent defeats demand that the party democratize itself internally or risk a long-term decline.

In Chihuahua, the PRI appeared on the verge of winning back a state governorship for the first time; it had lost the state to the National Action Party, or PAN, in 1992, one of a series of PRI electoral losses over the past decade that stung the world’s longest-ruling political party, which has run Mexico since 1929.

The right-leaning PAN had hoped to retain the Chihuahua governorship as a signal of PAN strength as the 2000 campaign approaches. The looming defeat would be a blow to the party and to the outgoing PAN governor, Francisco Barrio, often mentioned as a potential presidential candidate.

Officials reported medium to heavy turnout of up to 70% in the three states, and party spokespersons said no serious incidents were reported--a sharp contrast to past Mexican elections in which allegations of fraud were widespread. State electoral institutes, created in electoral reforms in the early 1990s, were administering the ballots, with constant and aggressive oversight by the parties to detect irregularities.

Political analysts said the elections would help determine which party takes the momentum in a series of 10 state elections this year, and in the initial stages of the campaign for the critical 2000 presidential election.

“Without doubt, this election will have an impact on the road to 2000,” the PRD’s Monreal told reporters as he cast his ballot. “If it can be done in Zacatecas, it can be done in the whole country.”

The PRD had already made a major advance a year ago when PRD leader Cuauhtemoc Cardenas won the first mayoral election in Mexico City. The same day, opposition legislators also took away the PRI’s majority in the lower house of Congress for the first time.

Only in 1989 did the PRI lose its first gubernatorial election (in Baja California) to the PAN. Since then, the PAN has won five more of 31 state governorships, and proclaimed itself well placed to become the first opposition party to defeat the PRI for the presidency in seven decades.

The PRI, however, looked to the state elections to regain its mandate for the 2000 election, especially with its performance in Chihuahua. The party’s recent losses had encouraged the reform movement within the PRI to win approval for reforms, such as the internal primaries.

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Martinez, former mayor of the capital city of Chihuahua, won the nomination in an unprecedented open primary in March in which more than 230,000 PRI supporters took part.

By contrast, in north-central Zacatecas, the PRI still hand-picked its candidate and Monreal bolted, forming an independent alliance. The PRD quickly embraced him as its candidate.

Political scientist Luis Rubio wrote Sunday that the success of the primary in Chihuahua would put strong pressure on the PRI to follow a similar system to choose the 2000 candidate after decades of the dedazo--the fingering of the nominee by the outgoing president (who is barred by the constitution from reelection).

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Greg Brosnan of The Times’ Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.