Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Leftist favored as new Mexican leader
Supporters say Sunday’s election is the best chance for change in status quo of violence.
MEXICO CITY — Voters streamed into polling stations on Sunday for a presidential election that could bring to power the first leftist since Mexico began its transition to democracy more than three decades ago.
In his third consecutive campaign for president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, 64, had by far his best chance. He dominated polls this election season, riding a wave of anger about government corruption and record-breaking drug war violence.
President Donald Trump looms in the background of this vote. He has not been a wedge issue in the election — as all candidates have opposed his policies and anti-Mexican rhetoric — but the new Mexican president will have to manage cross-border relations that are unusually fraught.
If elected, Lopez Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor, would represent an emphatic rejection of the traditional political parties and politicians whom Lopez Obrador regularly calls the “mafia of power.” In recent decades, Mexico has been led by technocrats and proAmerican politicians, while Lopez Obrador’s role models are Mexican independence and revolutionary leaders who stood up to more powerful foreign countries.
He competed against Ricardo Anaya, an ambitious 39-year-old former president of the right-leaning National Action Party (PAN); and a 49-year-old Yale-trained economist, Jose Antonio Meade, representing the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Both have lagged in the polls.
Exit polls late Sunday predicted clear victories for allies of Lopez Obrador in races for four statehouses plus the capital. Surveys conducted by Consulta Mitofsky and Televisa forecast gubernatorial wins for allies of the Morena party in Chiapas, Morelos, Tabasco and Veracruz, and for head of government in Mexico City.
Lopez Obrador’s opponents sought to portray him as a dangerous and radical populist who will lead Mexico back to failed economic models of subsidies and state intervention, while provoking more tension with Trump’s administration.
But the unpopularity of President Enrique Pena Nieto and the PRI, which has ruled Mexico for most of the past century, hobbled the candidate from his party and prompted voters to search for an alternative to traditional political candidates.
Election day began with the head of Mexico’s electoral agency, Lorenzo Cordova, stressing the importance of democracy and urging all sides to play by the rules.
Cordova called voting “the most important tool that citizens have in a democracy to exercise control over power.”
“Never in a plural, diverse and unequal society — like ours — are citizens really so equal as on election day,” he said.
Mexico has a long history of voter fraud, although elections have dramatically improved in recent years. In the past two elections Lopez Obrador alleged fraud as a reason for his losses.