Mexican Candidates Look to the U.S. for Swing Votes

Step aside, Al Gore and George W. Bush.

In the next few days, California will become the battleground for a different presidential race. In the most dramatic sign yet of post-NAFTA political change, two of Mexico’s three major presidential aspirants will arrive Sunday in Los Angeles for campaign swings. Their goal is to win over an increasingly important Mexican constituency: emigrants to the U.S.

Most U.S. immigrants will not cast ballots in Mexico’s July 2 election, as the country does not allow voting from abroad. But candidates hope that those in the U.S. will sway hundreds of thousands of relatives and friends back home. Those votes could be key in what is shaping up as the most competitive Mexican presidential race in history.

“Migrants have become an issue in [Mexican] presidential politics in a way they never have before,” said Robert Smith, a sociologist with the Project on Migration and Diasporas at Barnard College in New York. “They’re a very important swing vote.”

Vicente Fox of the center-right National Action Party, or PAN, and Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the center-left Democratic Revolution Party, the PRD, each will barnstorm for two days in California, which has the largest concentration of Mexican immigrants in the United States.

Their visits represent the striking change that has occurred in Mexican politicians’ attitude toward their brethren abroad. For years, the U.S. immigrants were ignored or even scorned at home. But thanks to their expanding numbers and a roaring U.S. economy, they now send home an estimated $6 billion a year--Mexico’s third-leading source of foreign exchange after petroleum and tourism.

Through their remittances and civic projects, the U.S.-based emigrants thus have an influential voice in thousands of villages in Mexico--turning the migrants into an important electoral group. Forget soccer moms; here, the hot new swing group is MoneyGram Mexicans.

“People in Mexico see them [the emigrants] as leaders,” said Carlos Salazar, director of international affairs for the PAN, which is conducting a major mobilization in the United States for the first time. “They send money here. They maintain many towns in Mexico.”

Fox flies to Los Angeles on Sunday morning, and plans rallies in Bakersfield and Fresno before heading to Sacramento. He will address both houses of the California Legislature there Monday. He also plans a stop in Chicago, another key center of Mexican immigrants.

Cardenas arrives Sunday night, and plans to meet with sympathizers and Mexican regional clubs in the Los Angeles area over the following two days.

The candidates’ visits are just one way Mexican parties are mobilizing support north of the border. Opposition parties are planning caravans of buses, cars and even horses to carry Mexican citizens living in the U.S. across the border July 2 to cast votes. The PAN and PRD are urging Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the U.S. to lobby their relatives and friends through postcards, phone calls and messages tucked into money orders sent back home.

And, for the first time, parties are even offering to give emigrants a formal voice in Mexican politics. The PRD is running two U.S.-based Mexican activists for seats in their nation’s Congress in the July election--Raul Ross of Chicago and Jose Jacques Medina of Los Angeles. The PAN recently introduced legislation to set aside 10 seats in the 500-seat Chamber of Deputies for Mexicans living in the United States. The legislation is still in the preliminary stage, however, and will probably not pass before year’s end--if at all.

“We’re a strong part of the [Mexican] economy. The politicians should take this into consideration” in Mexico, said Felipe Aguirre, the political-relations coordinator for Cardenas’ campaign in California.

Some analysts believe that Mexican emigrants may organize more this year than previously because the presidential race is so hotly contested. For seven decades, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, handily won presidential votes, thanks to its vast control over society and its use of electoral fraud.

Today, though, elections in Mexico are far cleaner. Recent polls show Fox closing in on the front-runner, the PRI’s Francisco Labastida. Cardenas trails well behind. Three minor-party candidates also are running.

“The democratization in Mexico has profoundly altered the calculus and mobilization of Mexicans in the U.S.,” Barnard College’s Smith said. “In fact, it makes their mobilization more meaningful. Real political change is actually happening in Mexico.”

Not everyone is convinced emigrants in the U.S. will be important to the vote. Mexican government officials, speaking privately, have cast doubt on their influence. Labastida is not planning a U.S. visit, although his wife, Maria Teresa Uriarte, campaigned last month in Los Angeles.

Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute in Claremont, said immigrants quickly embrace the political culture of their new home. While there are more than 2.5 million Mexican-born residents in California, he noted, “We forget that immigrants come over in families. If you’re a 9-year-old girl coming to the U.S., and five years later you’ve been attending California high schools, you’re not going to relate to Mexican politics.”

But immigrant activists and Mexico’s opposition parties say the influence of Mexicans abroad is underestimated. They also believe the majority of immigrants oppose the PRI, because many of them could not find well-paying jobs in Mexico.

“There’s a whole channel of communication that’s under the radar screen with Mexicans here and in Mexico,” said the PRD’s Aguirre. An immigrant dishwasher in Century City could be financially supporting parents, a spouse and other members of an extended family who vote back home, he noted. In sending money back, he said, “part of the message we send to Mexico is, ‘Vote for me.’ ”

The courting of emigrants marks a dramatic shift. For decades, Mexico’s government was deeply suspicious of the United States, and either ignored emigrants or treated them as virtual traitors.

But the government realized that Mexican Americans could be organized as a key bloc to support the North American Free Trade Agreement, which took effect in 1994. Mexico has since launched ambitious programs to help emigrants. The PRI, however, last year voted down a measure that would have allowed Mexicans abroad to vote.

Meanwhile, politicians of all parties began to discover that the immigrant communities were a major source of funds and influence back home. Cardenas has campaigned in the United States since his first presidential bid in 1988; in recent years, several candidates for governor have taken their campaigns north of the border.

“It’s a trend that’s begun to develop more and more as the diaspora population grows in size,” said Pachon of the policy institute.

In their visits to the U.S., the candidates don’t just address Mexicans abroad. An increasing number of voters at home have become concerned about the welfare of their families abroad. Politicians send a message back to Mexico that they will defend those relatives. Such calculations appear to be behind Fox’s visit to the Legislature.

“Sacramento is a continuation of Washington,” said the PAN’s Salazar. “The laws regarding Mexicans are made in Sacramento. Mexicans worry about this.”

Of course, Mexican politicians aren’t the only ones adopting cross-border campaigning in recognition of the increasing political integration and the growing importance of immigrants on both sides of the border.

Last month, presidential hopeful Bush--the Texas governor--dedicated a new bridge between Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. At a ceremony with Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, Bush emphasized the importance of the United States’ No. 2 trading partner.

“In the past, there have been walls of divide between Mexico and the United States,” Bush told a crowd of Mexicans. “We must, we must, be committed to raise the bridges of trade and friendship and freedom.”