Narrow race for Mexico governor
ALFREDO del Mazo Maza, the candidate from Mexico’s governing party, appeared to be heading towards a narrow victory late Sunday night in the fiercely fought election for governor of Mexico’s most populous state, according to early official returns, state officials said.
But Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the populist leader of the main opposition party, quickly sought to discredit the authorities, saying that the preliminary count for the vote in the state of Mexico “did not correspond to reality” and that technically, the results were “still a tie”.
According to officials, an initial sampling gave del Mazo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, 32.75 to 33.59 percent of the vote, while his main opponent, Delfina Gómez Álvarez of the National Regeneration Movement, or Morena, received 30.73 to 31.53 percent. The officials said they had a 95 percent level of confidence that their statistical calculations would hold up once all the votes are counted, a process that was expected to be complete yesterday and officially enshrined on Wednesday.
It was a historically tight contest for Mexico’s most coveted state governorship, and the results could be a harbinger of next year’s presidential election.
Sunday’s election capped a fiercely contested campaign that boiled down to a fight between two main political forces and the distinct futures they promised. Would voters support a deeply flawed but familiar status quo – the PRI, a party led by President Enrique Peña Nieto – or the chance for something different, Morena, led by López Obrador?
While the other contenders in the race included candidates representing two long-established parties, the conservative National Action Party and the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, neither presented a major challenge to the front-runners.
The last polls before Election Day showed del Mazo and Gómez locked in a statistical dead heat, an extraordinary situation for the PRI, which has held the governor’s office uninterrupted for nearly 90 years, often winning elections by wide margins.
Even del Mazo, in one of his final campaign rallies last week, acknowledged that his party was “facing a challenge like never before”.
The bitterly fought race was marked by accusations of fraud and malfeasance that included vote-buying, intimidation and the confiscation of voting cards. The agency that monitors electoral crime has opened more than 230 cases regarding irregularities, more than double the number in the last election six years ago.
“I think the people want another party,” said Juan Hernández, 48, an airport employee, who was sitting in a square in the town of Ocoyoacac after voting for one of the opposition candidates. “But the PRI has all the power and the money and is putting all that money in the campaign.”
Regardless of the outcome, López Obrador, who has declared his intention to run for president next year and has fashioned himself as the candidate best equipped to battle with President Donald Trump, stands to benefit greatly.
The strong showing by Gómez, the former director of an elementary school who entered politics in 2012, will help establish López Obrador’s young party as a legitimate national force.
And even if the election officials’ predictions hold up, securing the victory for del Mazo, López Obrador will probably point to the closely fought contest as a clear indication of the PRI’s vulnerabilities.
For the PRI, a win for del Mazo, a former congressman and mayor, is essential if the party hopes to sustain its national dominance.
Del Mazo is a product of the party’s machinery in the state of Mexico, and a scion of PRI royalty: His father and grandfather were governors of the state, and Peña Nieto, who previously served as the state’s governor, is his cousin.
For PRI supporters in the state of Mexico, it was a day of unusual tension and nervousness.
“I’m afraid,” said Dolores Alvarado, 67, a school cafeteria worker in the municipality of Ecatepec, who was planning to vote for del Mazo. “It’s better to stick with the devil you know than an unfamiliar one.”
For voters leaning toward other candidates, their best chance ever of unseating the PRI was palpable.
“Today there is hope. I think there really is a chance, because people are fed up,” said Salvador Albino, 47, a chauffeur for an affluent family who was on his way to vote in the municipality of Naucalpan.
But optimism among opposition supporters was severely tempered by the hard experience of having lived through so many decades of PRI dominance, cemented by the party’s formidable campaign machinery and its ability to muster votes through patronage jobs, handouts and other techniques.