Madrazo Loss Would Likely Shake Up PRI

TORREON -- Mexican presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo stepped from the air-conditioned cool of a blue Cadillac Escalade to greet a crowd that had traveled hours by bus to see him.

Reporters kept a ring around the lean, 53-year-old distance runner as he slowly made his way past thousands of well-wishers. Despite the late-afternoon heat, they filled a baseball field nearly shoulder to shoulder for a speech by the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known to generations of Mexicans as the PRI.

“The PRI can’t be dead,” Madrazo said to cheers, “because you are the PRI.”

But many wonder about the future of Mexico’s former ruling party, which held the presidency for seven decades before losing in 2000. With Madrazo running third in the polls, political analysts say a defeat in the July 2 election finally will force the PRI to figure out its role in Mexico’s emerging democracy or risk fading into history.

The election’s two front-runners have staked out both ends of the political spectrum. Conservative free-marketer Felipe Calderon and big-government leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador have left little for Madrazo, other than his claim to be the centrist.

As the accusations fly between the Calderon and Lopez Obrador campaigns, Madrazo has tried to appear moderate, urging voters away from what he calls the radicalism of the left and the intolerance of the right.

The PRI once claimed to represent all sides, from the rich businessman to the dirt-poor farmer. It still controls most local and state governments and remains the country’s largest political party, able to garner as many as 10 million votes.

But exactly whom the party now represents is unclear, and support for Madrazo is tepid. Without substantial votes from outside the PRI -- an unlikely prospect, given Madrazo’s negative image as a ruthless, old-style politician -- the candidate risks an embarrassing defeat.

“It’s clear that Madrazo is not only going to lose the election but he’s going to come in third,” said Rogelio Hernandez, a PRI expert at the College of Mexico. At least in 2000, the party finished second, he said.

“The PRI needs a shake-up because the problem, and the reason it’s in third place, is Roberto Madrazo,” said Sen. Manuel Bartlett Diaz, an old-school party leader who has thrown his support to Lopez Obrador, of the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD.

Madrazo, a former governor and party president like his father, isn’t buying that talk.

“I’m sure of victory,” he said from the front passenger seat of the luxury SUV. “There is a lot of emotion out there, and we have the biggest electoral structure.”

The PRI’s 2000 presidential candidate, Francisco Labastida, also spoke of winning. But his confidence was bolstered by polls showing him in the lead, and by a unified party.

It was no secret that Madrazo, who had lost to Labastida in the PRI’s first-ever primary, was peeved at the party over Labastitda’s showing. When he took over as party president in 2002, Madrazo began purging challengers, fracturing the party. Then he finished off former Mexico state Gov. Arturo Montiel with corruption allegations in a brutal primary race last fall.

But Madrazo’s victories appear Pyrrhic. Massive defections have left him with only a die-hard base that amounts to about half the votes he would need to win. They are the type of voter, “that under any circumstances, if they had Satan as a candidate, would vote PRI,” said Marcos Bucio, a former PRI presidential spokesman who jumped ship to support Calderon of the National Action Party, or PAN.

The rest of the PRI’s former base -- the rural and poor -- see something familiar in Lopez Obrador, who quit the PRI in 1988.

“They will go to Lopez Obrador because he is more like the PRI of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s,” said Alfonso Zarate, a political analyst in Mexico City. “Right now, he has two-thirds of the vote of people in the lower incomes, and Madrazo the other third.”

Madrazo travels by chartered jet as he crisscrosses Mexico for his campaign appearances. After a life in public service, he has substantial real estate holdings and drives luxury cars. Yet he says he can identify with the poor, who make up half of Mexico’s population.

“We lost in 2000 because we weren’t with the people,” he said. “After that, the PRI changed. We’ve reconnected with people.”

At the baseball field, Madrazo took 38 minutes to cross the infield, pass second base and reach a stage at the far end of center field, stopping to shake hands, kiss cheeks and get hoisted in a chair to applause.

Though the power of the president has diminished substantially since Vicente Fox’s victory six years ago, the presidency still matters to most Mexicans.

Heberto Reed Galindo, 74, waited to see Madrazo at a midday appearance a few miles north of here.

“The other guy, Lopez Obrador, you can’t believe him,” Reed said. “Madrazo has the most experience, and besides, I’ve voted the PRI my whole life. We’ve been with the PRI since we were kids.”

But the tire repairman is part of a dwindling generation.

The PRI needs younger voters and perhaps more important, younger and more dynamic leadership. It has some prospects in Congress and the governorships of 17 states. If they are seen as moving forward, rather than obstructing, as they were viewed under Fox, the PRI has a fighting chance.

Although the party is likely to win the largest number of seats in Congress on July 2, it faces a three-way split with PAN and PRD lawmakers.

For now, the PRI’s political machine is sputtering to the finish in its most important race.

Madrazo began his speech at dusk from the outfield stage, illuminated by banks of lighting. Several thousand in front waved banners and cheered.

By the gates near first base, people streamed out by the hundreds. They were tired, their feet hurt and the children were getting cranky, they said, as they headed for the buses and the long ride home.

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Cecilia Sanchez and Carlos Martinez of The Times’ Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.