Mexico Presidential Hopefuls Slug It Out in Local Elections

The opening round in Mexico’s July presidential election is being fought this weekend in the country’s most populous state, a horseshoe-shaped territory of bustling industrial suburbs and quaint rural towns around the nation’s capital.

Leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the front-runner according to most polls, is campaigning widely in the state of Mexico ahead of local elections Sunday, which are seen as a bellwether for the national campaign. He is lashing out against corruption with strident speeches against the “thieves” in government.

Conservative candidate Felipe Calderon has a new commercial with a gesture that he and his supporters repeat at his campaign rallies: He throws up his hands to show that they are “clean” of the stain of bribery.

And the candidate running third in the polls, Roberto Madrazo, is trying hard to rally the faithful in a state that his Institutional Revolutionary Party can’t afford to lose if he wants to be president, even as corruption scandals eat away at the party’s support.

“We can’t rest now because we’ve already got half our body through the door” of power, Madrazo told the party faithful at a recent rally in the state capital, Toluca. “We’re going to get the rest in, for the good of Mexico.”

On Sunday, voters in the state will choose 125 mayors and 75 state legislators. All three leading presidential candidates have campaigned extensively on behalf of their parties’ slates with their eyes on the national election.

“The results will be very important symbolically,” said Jose Antonio Crespo, a political analyst. “Whoever does well will be in a good position for July.”

In the 2000 presidential election, Vicente Fox of the conservative National Action Party won Mexico state on his way to a historic victory that ended seven decades of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI. Last year, with Fox’s popularity waning, the PRI candidate won the governor’s race.

Now it’s the leftist Democratic Revolution Party that is riding the coattails of its presidential candidate, Lopez Obrador, the popular former mayor of Mexico City. The party, known as the PRD, hopes for a strong showing in the local races.

Lopez Obrador has campaigned in the state more than any other presidential candidate. On the stump, he picks up the populist themes that defined his rise to prominence as Mexico City’s mayor, a post he held until last year.

“If we accept the rule of those who think they are the bosses and lords of Mexico, nothing will change for the people on the bottom,” Lopez Obrador told about 3,000 supporters at a midweek rally in Zumpango, about 30 miles north of Mexico City. “I come to invite you to join us in this movement, so that together we can help our country escape from backwardness and poverty.”

Lopez Obrador is drawing big crowds across the country. Camela Castillo came to the rally in Zumpango with a sign that showed her support for him: “You are my rooster, Andres Manuel! Good luck!”

Still, she didn’t have much enthusiasm for his party’s mayoral candidate in Zumpango.

“The truth is that none of them [the local candidates] is any good,” she said. “The day we have a candidate like Andres Manuel here in Zumpango is the day the PRD will win. They’re all sons of caciques,” or political bosses.

Across much of the nation, Lopez Obrador is far more popular than his party, according to polls. But analysts say his lead in the presidential race -- 6 to 10 percentage points in recent polls -- probably will translate into some gains in local elections for the PRD.

The most important of the races may be for mayor of Ecatepec, the biggest municipality in Mexico state. The sprawling suburb just outside Mexico City’s Federal District has 1.1 million registered voters.

The PRI runs Ecatepec. But polls show its candidate, Pablo Bedolla Lopez, tied with the PRD’s Jose Luis Gutierrez Cureno. Several PRI leaders in the city, angry about what they called corruption in their party, are backing Gutierrez Cureno.

“If the PRI loses Ecatepec, it will look very bad for them,” said Leo Zuckermann, a political analyst and professor at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching in Mexico City.

The presidential campaign of Calderon of the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, hopes to get a badly needed boost from Sunday’s election. Calderon’s strongest support in the state resides in the middle-class and affluent neighborhoods just outside Mexico City.

On Wednesday, Calderon told a campaign rally in Cuautitlan Izcalli that Lopez Obrador was an enemy of foreign investment.

“I’m the one who can make an economy grow,” he said. “All he knows how to do is chase jobs away.”

Calderon’s candidacy has stagnated since January, after a government-imposed “Christmas truce” on campaigning. Despite spending twice as much on television advertising as all the other presidential candidates combined, Calderon has made up little or no ground in the polls on Lopez Obrador.

He replaced his media coordinator and other top members of his campaign team this month.