Already, Some See a Filler of Fox’s Shoes

MEXICO CITY -- The cardboard-shack dwellers had been waiting three hours for an audience, to plead for decent housing. They stood in Mexico City’s giant central square outside the mayor’s office, still pitch-dark.

A few minutes after 6 on Monday morning, Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador drove up alone and left his white Nissan sedan with an attendant. Muttering a hurried “Buenos dias,” he strode quickly past the 20 shack dwellers and assorted other favor-seekers. He was late for work, but would attend to them momentarily.

Mexico’s best-known early riser does this every weekday. His attention to a populace increasingly disillusioned with President Vicente Fox is one reason Lopez Obrador emerged as a big winner in Sunday’s nationwide elections, even though his name was not on the ballot.

As Fox’s center-right National Action Party faltered badly, the 49-year-old mayor’s leftist Democratic Revolution Party made the largest gains in the lower house of Congress, solidifying his status as the most popular and talked-about undeclared candidate for president in 2006.

“I bet Fox is sleeping right now, quietly, without a care,” said 30-year-old Claudia Laredo, one of the shack dwellers. “And here is Lopez Obrador, at this early hour, helping his people. He would make a good president.”

The mayor’s name came up repeatedly Monday as political parties and analysts turned abruptly to 2006, studying the election results for likely contenders to succeed a president who is barred by law from running again.

“He’s definitely the front-runner,” said Jorge Castaneda, who was Fox’s foreign minister until January and is exploring a possible presidential bid.

The once-omnipotent Institutional Revolutionary Party, which lost the presidency to Fox in 2000 but bounced back Sunday to improve its margin as the largest party in Congress, has many hopefuls of its own.

But the party, known as the PRI, has not even decided how it will choose a nominee, and many predict a bruising fight involving party chairman Roberto Madrazo and several state governors.

Interior Minister Santiago Creel and Carlos Medina Plascencia, who ran the campaign for Fox’s National Action Party, saw their presidential aspirations hurt by its dismal finish Sunday, analysts said.

That leaves Lopez Obrador, the undisputed star of a party with 17% of the electorate. Mexicans on the left hope he can duplicate the feat of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the former union leader in Brazil whose enormous popularity won him that nation’s presidency last year on a minority leftist party ticket.

Lopez Obrador’s approval ratings exceed 80%, in part because of his image as the anti-Fox.

The president is a tall, brash-talking rancher and former business executive from Mexico’s cattle belt. The mayor is a soft-spoken man of medium height who has spent his adult life in politics and began by organizing Indian communities along the Gulf Coast for the PRI. He bolted to the Democratic Revolution Party in 1989 and was elected Mexico City mayor in 2000.

Fox, limited by Mexico’s economic slump, keeps a tight rein on public spending. Lopez Obrador cultivates rich entrepreneurs to help finance high-visibility projects, including a major downtown renovation, and provides $60 monthly handouts to every city resident over 70.

The president, in the words of many who voted Sunday, is known for his unfulfilled promises. The mayor is known for getting things done.

Lopez Obrador’s critics say he is spending beyond the budget, threatening to push the city into bankruptcy. Even his allies wonder how he can win with a party that is wedded to a statist ideology that he himself does not fully share and has only scant following outside the capital and a few southern states.

“The election shows that he cannot transfer his popularity much beyond Mexico City, and that is a potential liability for 2006,” Castaneda said.

The mayor has been guarded about his presidential hopes, perhaps wary of declaring them too early and having to withstand three years of partisan attack. On Monday, at his daily 6 a.m. news conference, he was queried repeatedly.

“I am not going to be distracted by 2006,” he replied. “It is not correct to waste time thinking about 2006. I have the good fortune to govern this great city, to serve it.”

Then it was back to work. He instructed an aide to hear out the shack dwellers.

They were told to come back for a longer audience Thursday, when the mayor’s office would have some proposals for helping them.