Mexican Elections: A Readout

Mexico went to the polls yesterday to elect 12 governors and dozens of presidentes municipales. The results appear to show the status quo holding steady, with the PRI holding 6 governorships, losing 3 state houses while gaining 3 others. However, the expectations were high for the PRI and the 3 states lost were symbolically and strategically important for several reasons.

In Oaxaca, a similar coalition to one built in 2004 and the same candidate from that year, Gabino Cue, beat back the PRI, who have controlled Oaxaca since 1929. The outgoing governor, Ulises Ruiz, was accused of stealing the '04 election and oversaw tremendous state repression during the '06-'07 civil unrest. He was also found responsible for violating the human rights of Oaxacan citizens by the Supreme Court last fall. In Sinaloa, another PAN-PRD coalition candidate, Mario Lopez Valdez, pulled off an upset over the former mayor of Culican who has been connected to powerful drug traffickers for decades. And in Puebla, the outgoing PRI governor, who used the power of his office to kidnap a muckraking journalist, seemed to taint his party's candidate in yesterday's election.

Neither the PAN nor the PRD though can be considered yesterday's victors. About President Calderon and the PAN, the AP wrote, "Calderon's conservative National Action Party won not a single state on its own, and lost two it had held, and needed desperate alliances with leftists to wrest strongholds from the old ruling party."

The PRD is still in shambles following Lopez Obrador's fractious leadership over the party and will need a personally dynamic candidate untainted by (and possibly at odds) with AMLO in 2012 to inspire any following. Is Marcelo Ebrard such a candidate?

In the end, the PRI is still well-positioned to take Los Pinos in 2012 but will now have to run on its governing record as the majority party in Congress and the party with nearly 2/3rds of Mexico's governorships. For the record, the prospect of the PRI, whose continued political philosophy is its own self-interest, retaking the presidency would be a step back for Mexican democracy. But, as they say, nations end up with the leaders they deserve.

The PAN-PRD alliance could offer a viable pathway towards the governorship in Estado de Mexico, currently held by the PRI's leading presidential candidate, Enrique Pena Nieto. A loss by the PRI there would deflate his prestige slightly. The PAN-PRD players would do well to remember the battles they waged together in 1988 after Salinas stole the election from Lazaro Cardenas.