Mexico City Mayor Emerges Stronger as He Prepares Bid

With the disputed legal case against him fading, Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has emerged with an enhanced profile and a broader organizational base as he heads for a presidential bid next year, analysts said Thursday.

The question is whether he can keep the momentum going.

Supporters say the publicity generated by the government’s apparently failed attempt to prosecute him over a minor land dispute and thereby disqualify him from next year’s race gives the mayor the national stature he lacked before the controversy exploded this month.

The widespread perception that Lopez Obrador was the victim of dirty politics also energized a grass-roots network of about 4,000 neighborhood “citizens committees” that have sprung up since December. All are now expected to be absorbed into the mayor’s eventual presidential campaign.

“The process has been an advantage for Lopez Obrador,” said Mario Franco, a sociologist and citizens committee leader in the lower-middle-class Loma Quebrada neighborhood of southwestern Mexico City. “A lot of members joined out of disgust and resentment.”

Political scientist Federico Estevez of the National Autonomous Technological Institute agreed. He said Thursday that Lopez Obrador, by forcing the administration of President Vicente Fox to back off, has become an “unstoppable” presidential contender.

“Oh, absolutely, because the point about hitting home runs is if you become Barry Bonds, people have higher expectations of you,” he said. “The aura of the champ helps him become unreachable.”

The government had sought to prosecute the mayor on abuse of authority charges for allegedly ignoring a 2001 court order to halt a municipal road project over disputed land.

The charges could have kept him off the 2006 ballot because Mexican law bars anyone facing a criminal charge from seeking public office.

The charges elicited a torrent of domestic and international criticism that they amounted to selective justice designed to eliminate a rival.

Voter polls show Lopez Obrador, of the Democratic Revolution Party, with comfortable leads over possible opponents from Fox’s National Action Party and the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Fox can’t run for reelection.

Though the government has not formally dropped its case, Fox moved Wednesday to defuse the crisis. He accepted the resignation of Atty. Gen. Rafael Macedo de la Concha and said his replacement, Daniel Cabeza de Vaca, would “exhaustively review” the case, which many interpreted as a prelude to dropping it.

Signs abounded Thursday that dismissal of the case was only a matter of time. After insisting for weeks that the rule of law was at stake in prosecuting the mayor, Interior Minister Santiago Creel -- widely considered a top candidate for president from Fox’s party -- said he wanted the case to be resolved so that the country could “turn the page.”

Asked at a news conference whether the prosecution of Lopez Obrador was in effect over, presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar responded that Fox’s moves Wednesday were designed to “give us a way out.”

In a speech here Thursday, Fox seemed to regard the crisis as history.

“The road is open, the clouds have cleared, we have eliminated uncertainty and assured that the electoral process of 2006 will go with absolute legality with liberty and equality that the process requires,” he said.

In comments at a news conference, Lopez Obrador said he welcomed Fox’s statement the day before and the attorney general’s resignation and credited his supporters, saying they have given Mexico “a lesson in political maturity and democratic vocation.”

The mayor is not expected to formalize his candidacy until his party holds its nominating convention this summer. But he and his supporters have slowly been assembling the pieces for a national campaign.

Backing for Lopez Obrador is still concentrated in urban areas, the traditional base for his populist party, and he has been trying to reach out to other states and younger voters. But his toughest challenge may be appealing to the Mexican business community, which is nervous about his leftist leanings and his criticism of neoliberal economic policies.

Leo Zuckermann, a political scientist here at the Center for Economic Teaching and Research, said Lopez Obrador’s path to the presidency was anything but assured.

“What we don’t know is whether this wave of favorable public opinion will crystallize and become permanent. We are far from the 2006 election and many things can happen,” Zuckermann said. “It’s farfetched to think the vote is now just a formality.”

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Times staff writer Marla Dickerson contributed to this report.