San Luis R.C. voters reflect nat’l trend in historic Mexico election
SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Son. — For the first time in this city’s history, neither of Mexico’s two main political parties will be in control of municipal government — if the current trends hold in vote counting for Sunday’s mayoral races.
Santos Gonzalez, the candidate of the National Regeneration Movement — or MORENA, as it’s known by its Spanish acronym — received 19,832 of 45,001 votes so far counted Monday, or 44 percent.
His next closest challenger was Hector Leyva, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and a coalition smaller parties. Leyva had 10,845 votes, or 24 percent of those so far counted, followed by Everardo Lopez, the candidate of the National Action Party (PAN) and its coalition. Lopez had 9,414 votes or nearly 21 percent.
The mayoral race took place concurrently with Mexico’s presidential and state and federal congressional races, and a victory by Gonzalez would reflect a
VOTERS WAIT IN LINE SUNDAY TO VOTE
national trend. Voter dissatisfaction with ongoing violence, corruption and the economy helped propel Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the MORENA candidate, to the presidency on Sunday.
The PRI ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century, and since 2000 it has alternated with the PAN in the presidency. Current President Enrique Peña Nieto, whose term is up in December, is from the PRI.
Dating back to 1939, each of the mayors of San Luis Rio Colorado has come from either the PRI or the PAN. If confirmed later this week as the winner, Gonzalez is slated to begin a three-year term in September.
Gonzalez, an insurance agent in San Luis Rio Colorado, said in an interview Sunday he was optimistic of victory.
“We are very excited,” he said shortly after voting in a downtown polling site. “We hope that the weariness that the people feel over these incumbents, with this system that has become so debilitated over the years, will provoke a reaction in favor of the true change that the candidates of MORENA offer.”
MORENA is a left-leaning party formed in 2014 by Lopez Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor who previously ran for the presi-
dency in 2006 and 2012.
Three other candidates in the mayoral race — Marco Antonio Luna, Luis Valtierra and Claudia Mendez — each received less than 10 percent of the vote, according to preliminary returns.
Jesus Montes, the MORENA candidate, received 45 percent of the vote total in the race for San Luis Rio Colorado’s seat in the Sonora state legislature, followed by PRI’s Jose Enrique Carrasco, with 24.9 percent, and the PAN’s Laura Nunez, with 7.2 percent.
Manuel de Jesus Baldenebro, a former San Luis Rio Colorado mayor who has since joined MORENA, was leading in the race for the city’s seat in the federal Chamber of Deputies, Mexico’s equivalent of the U.S. House of Representatives. He had 45 percent of the vote.
San Luis Rio Colorado voters also favored MORENA’s candidates for Sonora’s two seats in the federal senate, Maria Lilly Tellez and Francisco Alfonso Durazo, giving them 46 percent of the city’s vote, in what mirrored a statewide trend.
Gonzalez was making his second bid for mayor of San Luis Rio Colorado, a city of about 250,000 across from Yuma County. Previously, he ran in 2009 as the candidate of the left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party.
On Saturday he filed a formal complaint of illegal campaigning with electoral officials, following the discovery of fliers alleging he was backed by narcotics traffickers and that he had physically attacked women. More than 7,000 of the handouts were found.
Some voters complained of attempts to buy their votes on Sunday, among them Daniela Sarmiento.
“It’s disgusting that for 500 or 1,000 pesos voters are being sold or bought,” she said. “I was a witness to that, and they threatened me. I told an official and he didn’t do anything.”
Gonzalez said reports of vote-buying had surfaced days earlier and that the infraction was included as part of his complaint, filed with the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Electoral Offenses.
Apart from the complaints, voting took place peacefully Sunday, although the opening of some polls was delayed because of a lack of poll officials. Voters stood in line for as long as two hours at some polls while waiting to vote.