PRI Wins Mexico State Governor’s Race, but Loses Smaller Stronghold

Mexico’s long-ruling party celebrated a crucial victory Monday in the country’s most populous state, where it gained the governor’s mansion and fresh momentum for next year’s presidential election.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, won in Mexico state but lost the other contest held Sunday, in the small state of Nayarit, where it was defeated for the first time.

Mexicans paid close attention to both races for signs of weakness in the PRI, which has held the country’s presidency for 70 years but is facing unprecedented competition.

Mexico state, which curls around the nation’s capital and is home to nearly 13% of the country’s voters, is considered especially important because of its size and economic clout.

“This is a psychological shot of adrenaline” for the PRI, said George Grayson of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., who studied and wrote in advance about Sunday’s races.

Still, the vote totals released Monday reflected how far the PRI has fallen from its once-dominant position. In the last governor’s race in Mexico state, in 1993, the PRI waltzed to victory, winning 63% of the vote. In contrast, the recent campaign had the frenzy of a jitterbug contest.

The PRI candidate in Sunday’s election, Arturo Montiel, won 40.7%, according to results from 93% of the precincts.

Jose Luis Duran of the right-leaning National Action Party had 34.2%, while Higinio Martinez of the left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party followed with 21.3%.

“The votes don’t belong to any one party. There’s a great volatility,” said Alfonso Zarate, author of a political newsletter in Mexico City.

The PRI’s support has dropped in recent years because of corruption scandals and economic crises. But it continues to benefit from strong rural support, a novice opposition and a tenacious party machine.

Analysts agreed that Sunday’s election in Mexico state followed a pattern seen in other states. When the PRI unites around a candidate and the two opposition parties divide the rest of the vote, the ruling party can usually eke out a victory.

“The PRI continues to be the majority party, the only one with a national presence,” Jose Antonio Crespo, a political scientist who has written a book about the ruling party, noted Monday. “What happened [Sunday] is a clear sign to the opposition that, if it is divided, the PRI will probably win” in 2000.

In the small, thinly populated Pacific state of Nayarit, the opposite lesson seemed to emerge from Sunday’s vote. There, the two main opposition parties successfully joined behind a single candidate, Antonio Echevarria.

With 87% of the voting booths reporting Monday, Echevarria had 52% of the vote to 43% for the PRI candidate, Jose Lucas Vallarta.

It was the first PRI defeat in a governor’s race in Nayarit--a stunning event in a state described by Grayson as a Mexican “Jurassic Park . . . dominated by PRI political dinosaurs.”

Some analysts noted that the opposition victory hardly reflected the buoyancy of the coalition partners: Echevarria, the opposition candidate, bolted from the PRI just months before the race.

“The triumph was due to a rupture in the PRI more than to the coalition,” Crespo said.