Ruling Party Prevails in Mexico Vote

Official results Monday confirmed that the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party took two of three governorships in weekend elections, rebounding from recent defeats and improving its prospects of extending seven decades of power in the 2000 presidential election.

The PRI’s victories in the northern states of Chihuahua and Durango dealt a harsh blow to the right-wing National Action Party, or PAN. It failed to hold the gubernatorial post in Chihuahua, which it first won in the 1992 elections, and in the process, outgoing Gov. Francisco Barrio might have been knocked from contention for the PAN presidential nomination.

With 76% of the Chihuahua vote counted, the PRI’s reformist candidate, Patricio Martinez, held an insurmountable lead of 48% to 41% over PAN candidate Ramon Galindo, and PRI candidates also dominated mayoral and state legislative races.

Martinez, an entrepreneur and popular former mayor of the state capital who won the nomination in an unprecedented PRI primary in March, declared: “We transformed the PRI, and the people responded.”

The centrist PRI also won the governorship in Durango by 40% to 29% over the PAN and took two-thirds of the mayoral races.

In north-central Zacatecas state, Ricardo Monreal of the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, defeated the PRI’s Jose Olvera Acevedo by 42% to 36%, giving the PRD its first governorship. However, that result needs an asterisk: Monreal was the state’s most popular PRI leader until he was denied the nomination by the party machine and defected to the PRD in January. Also, PRI candidates in Zacatecas captured most local races.

Still, the PRD built on its victory a year ago in Mexico City’s first mayoral race, as well as on strong gains in national congressional elections.

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Political scientist Jorge Castaneda said the defeat of Barrio’s party in Chihuahua virtually hands the PAN presidential nomination to Guanajuato Gov. Vicente Fox, an outspoken and self-proclaimed contender. The PAN has won six of Mexico’s 31 governorships since 1989; this was the first time the PRI took one back.

Castaneda added that the victory of the PRI in Chihuahua and its defeat in Zacatecas vindicated the ruling party’s move toward primaries. The outcome “makes it almost certain there will be at least some form of democratic process” in the PRI to pick the 2000 presidential nominee, he said.

PRI leader Mariano Palacios said that in Chihuahua, the party “won citizens’ support to return this state to a government that is sensitive to the needs of society.”