Candidate rides hatred of politics in Mexico election

MEXICO CITY—Mexicans’ disgust with corrupt, aloof, high-living politicians has a name, and it’s El Bronco. The horseback-riding, boot-clad, tough-talking Jaime Rodriguez lives up to his nickname.

As mayor of a suburb of the northern industrial city of Monterrey, he survived two assassination attempts that left his car bullet-ridden, defying, he says, the fierce Zetas cartel. Now Rodriguez is trying to beat the odds in another way, running as an independent for governor of Nuevo Leon, a wealthy and strategic state bordering Texas.

The June 7 midterm election is the first time the country has allowed unaffiliated candidates, thanks to an electoral reform last year. But the law allows him only a fraction of the campaign financing the government gives political parties.

Although it is a state race, Rodriguez has captured the national imagination with his unorthodox manner and unrefined speech. He explains the challenges of his uphill race this way: “Sometimes God slaps you upside the head to make you get with program.”

El Bronco says his nickname, and his blunt style just “show people that I’m the same as them, that I’m nobody different, that I’m just another guy who wants things to change, and things to be better.”

Midterm elections, in which 500 members of congress, 17 state legislatures, nine governors and more than 300 mayors will be chosen, are usually viewed as a referendum on the president’s performance half-way through his six-year term.

But this year it seems to be a referendum on the parties. In an opinion poll carried out by the lower house of congress earlier this year, 75 percent said they had little or no confidence in any party. The margin of error was 3.9 percentage points.

“This breath of fresh air could be just the shock the parties need, at least in Nuevo Leon,” Luis Carlos Ugalde, former head of the Mexico’s national election commission, told local media.