Mexico’s PRI Continues Its Comeback With Governorships

Closing out a year of triumphs that have buoyed its hopes of regaining the presidency, Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party easily kept control of the governorships of Puebla and Tamaulipas in state elections Sunday.

But the former ruling party, known as the PRI, was locked in tight races with President Vicente Fox’s National Action Party in Sinaloa and Tlaxcala states.

Nearly four years after Fox took office, Mexico’s electoral map belies predictions that the PRI’s stunning loss of the presidency, after 71 years of autocratic rule, would lead to its disintegration. Rebuilding from the ground up, the PRI widened its plurality in Congress last year and has won eight of the last 12 governors’ races.

As sources of patronage, governorships are strategic building blocks in the maneuvering among Mexico’s three major parties ahead of the 2006 presidential election. If Sunday’s preliminary results hold up, the PRI will govern at least 16 of Mexico’s 32 states.

A strong PRI showing Sunday would solidify the power of Roberto Madrazo, the party leader who has engineered its comeback since his selection in 2001 and has all but declared his intention to seek its presidential nomination.

One conclusion from Sunday’s voting is that Mexicans, whose constitution forbids reelection at all levels of government, are averse to candidates who run to replace their spouses -- as Fox’s wife, Marta Sahagun, has hinted she might in 2006.

In the central state of Tlaxcala, First Lady Maria del Carmen Ramirez Garcia won a bitter legal battle against the Democratic Revolution Party to keep her name on the ballot, only to trail in Sunday’s voting. Her party, known as the PRD, was losing the governorship six years after breaking the PRI’s monopoly on it.

The race in Tlaxcala was the best hope Sunday for Fox’s center-right party, known as the PAN, to offset a steady decline in its nationwide strength. As the economy has slumped and the president’s legislative agenda has bogged down in the opposition-dominated Congress, PRI politicians have gone on the offensive against PAN candidates everywhere.

“The PAN still has not found a message to win elections,” said Mentor Tijerina, a PRI strategist. “Advocating change is not enough when you have had four years of Fox and nothing has changed.”

Yet the PRI has done little to reform its autocratic ways. The state party in Tlaxcala split after its chairman, Mariano Gonzalez, rejected a primary election and engineered his own nomination by a small group of elite PRI members.

Hector Ortiz, an ex-Tlaxcala city mayor who many believe would have won a PRI primary, defected to become the candidate of a PAN-led coalition. With 40% of ballots counted, Gonzalez led Ortiz by less than 1 percentage point.

The PRI has governed the three other states in play Sunday since its founding in 1929, and incumbents there used patronage to hold rival party factions together for elections.

In the northern border state of Tamaulipas, Eugenio Hernandez, a protege of PRI Gov. Tomas Yarrington, was winning 58% of the vote despite the state’s notoriety for drug-gang violence and police corruption on the incumbent’s watch.

Mario Marin, the PRI candidate in the populous central state of Puebla, garnered 53% of the vote. The PAN disqualified its strongest candidate for alleged vote-buying during the primary campaign.

Fox’s party was thought to have had a better chance in the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa, and was trailing by less than 2 percentage points with 70% of the vote counted. As in Tamaulipas, the PAN tried to capitalize on alleged PRI tolerance of corruption and drug trafficking.

The PAN brought in one of Fox’s strategists from 2000, Santiago Pando, to help shape the campaign of Heriberto Felix Guerra. His TV ads pointed out that a bodyguard of slain drug trafficker Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes had been on the state payroll and that a fugitive former state police chief was wanted for questioning in a drug case.

But the PAN lost the moral high ground after one of its state lawmakers, Saul Rubio, was seen attending the funeral last month of slain drug trafficker Miguel Angel Beltran Lugo. The PRI used that as a weapon in favor of its candidate, state legislative leader Jesus Aguilar Padilla.

Although Sinaloa’s economy is stagnant, PRI Gov. Juan Millan has worked effectively, building highways and housing. His approval ratings exceed 70% as he leaves office. Ironically, the governor’s success was due in part to Felix Guerra’s nonpartisan efforts as secretary of economic development before his departure to pursue the PAN nomination.

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Kraul reported from Culiacan and Boudreaux from Tlaxcala and Mexico City.