Election time
Mexico voters set to pick new leaders Sunday
SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Son. — Four months of campaigning come to an end Sunday as voters here and across Mexico go to the polls to cast ballots in races for the presidency, the nation’s congress and local and state offices.
More than 150,000 residents in San Luis Rio Colorado and the small communities that fall within the city’s jurisdiction are registered to vote, according to the Sonora state Electoral Institute, the agency overseeing the elections.
Besides voting in presidential, congressional and state legislative races, voters will also choose a new mayor for the border city located across from Yuma County.
More than 250 voting centers are scheduled to remain open to voters from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. in San Luis.
As the elections approach, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a left-leaning populist and former mayor of Mexico City, retains a double-digit lead in the polls in the race for president, according to polls.
Lopez Obrador, the candidate of the National Regeneration Movement and a coalition of other leftist parties, is trailed in the polls by Ricardo Anaya, the candidate of the center-right National Action Party, known by its Spanish acronym PAN, followed by Jose Antonio Meade, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and then Jaime Rodriguez Calderon, waging an independent campaign.
A left-leaning populist known as AMLO, Obrador, in winning, would deal a blow to the traditional political power structure in a country where the PRI and PAN have alternated in control of the presidency over the last two decades. Mexico’s current president, Enrique Pena Nieto of the PRI, is barred from seeking a new term.
A recent change in state law allowed Enrique Reina to seek another three-year term as mayor of San Luis Rio Colorado, although he chose not to. Six candidates, including those of the PRI and the PAN, are competing to succeed him.
But given concerns about Mexico’s economy, corruption and drug cartel-related violence, the presidential race is of greater interest to many residents of San Luis, such as Fernando Cisneros.
“I think that’s because we are more affected by what happens with the economy of the nation,” he said. “We’re buying more expensive gasoline, we’re paying very hightaxes, but salaries aren’t going up,” said Cisneros, an employee of a business in the city’s downtown.
“I’m not saying it doesn’t matter what City Hall does, but we are squeezed harder by what the federal government does with prices and taxes.”
Mexicans saw huge increases at the pumps in 2017 after the government deregulated gasoline prices as part of reforms in the energy sector.
San Luis resident Martin Correa said he wishes the presidential candidates would have spent more time talking about what they would do to hold down those and other consumer prices.
“When Lopez Obrador came here (to campaign), he said he would lower the price of gasoline, and then it seemed like the other candidates were saying the same thing,” said Correa, a landscaper. “But I don’t see how they can do it just because they say they will. They say they will set it at the same price as on the other side (of the border), but what is not being compared is what people earn over there with what we earn here. I don’t think salaries are ever going to be equal for us.”
Lopez Obrador, making his third run at the presidency this year, in April made a campaign swing in San Luis Rio Colorado, the only one among the presidential candidates to do so. He vowed to set gas prices at the same amount charged in U.S. border cities. He also called for reducing Mexico’s value added tax on goods from 16 percent to 8 percent.
As in the presidential race, various political parties have formed coalitions for purposes of fielding candidates in the mayoral election.
Running for mayor in San Luis are the Everardo Lopez, the candidate of the PAN and the left-leaning Democratic Revolutionary Party; Hector Virgilio Leyva, candidate of the PRI and the Ecologist Green Party and the New Alliance Party; Santos Gonzalez, of the coalition of the National Regeneration Movement and the rightward Social Encounter Party; Luis Valtierra, of the Citizen Movement Party; and Claudia Mendez, of the Sonoran Alternative Movement party.
Seven of the city last eight mayors have come from the PAN.
Analysts in Mexico predict voter turnout Sunday will be higher than in the last presidential race in 2012, when 62 percent of voters voted. That, in turn, was higher than the turnout for the previous election in 2006, when 59 percent voted.
Correa and Cisneros said they believe concerns about the pocketbook will prompt many voters to go to the polls on Sunday.
“I’m not saying it doesn’t matter what City Hall does, but we are squeezed harder by what the federal government does with prices and taxes.”