Visit by Mexican Politician Canceled

A Mexican presidential candidate arriving Sunday in Los Angeles has backed out of a local speaking engagement, leaving the United States-Mexico Chamber of Commerce scrambling to notify ticket-holders that the event has been canceled.

About 300 people had paid $60 each to hear an international policy address by Vicente Fox, candidate of the National Action Party. Fox was scheduled to speak Monday at a noon luncheon at the Regal Biltmore Hotel.

“There’s a lot of disappointed and dismayed people when we have to call up and tell them it is not going to happen,” said James Clark, executive director of the California Pacific Chapter of the chamber.

The event was sponsored by the chamber and had been planned for weeks. Fox’s campaign had requested the appearance, Clark said.

On Tuesday the Fox campaign sent the chamber an e-mail saying that “due to time constraints of the campaign, he couldn’t attend,” Clark said. Mexico’s election is on July 2.

The cancellation means Fox will spend virtually no time campaigning in Los Angeles County during his two-day visit to California. The candidate is expected to fly to Los Angeles on Sunday and then board a bus for Bakersfield, where he will attend a rally. He will then travel to Fresno. On Monday, he will speak before the Legislature.

His absence from Los Angeles has raised concerns among some who were anticipating his visit.

“Some of my members are questioning as to why he didn’t make it to Southern California,” said Guadalupe Gomez, president of the Zacatecanos Civic Committee, an association of residents who hail from the Mexican state of Zacatecas. The group, a registered political action committee, had invited all six Mexican presidential candidates to visit Southern California.

Gomez said he had received an invitation to join Fox in Sacramento, but members of his committee were debating whether to send a delegation.

“If they decided not to come, maybe they believe it’s not important,” he said.

Organizers of Fox’s campaign could not be reached for comment.

The Fox event would have been the second major Mexican presidential campaign event the chamber had hosted in as many months.

In April the group sponsored a debate with representatives from Mexico’s three leading parties: the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI; the center-left Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD; and Fox’s center-right National Action Party.

Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the PRD is scheduled to be in Los Angeles on Monday and Tuesday. Local campaign organizers said he was ready to debate Fox at the chamber event.

“We also received a request from the local campaign for the PRI to have someone there, but we said no, it was a Fox event,” Clark said. “We would have been happy to have hosted Mr. Labastida had he chosen to come to California.”

Francisco Labastida, the PRI candidate, declined to appear until after the presidential election.

Regardless of the election’s outcome, the chamber expects to sponsor another event.

“We hope to have whoever wins the [Mexican] presidential election here in California, after the election,” Clark said. “We are nonpartisan. . . . We want whatever is best for Mexico.”