Mexico Legislative and Governor elections June 6th 2021

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The TEPJF has ruled in the INE's favour and cancelled the candidacies of Morena's gubernatorial candidates in Guerrero (Félix Salgado) and Michoacán (Raúl Morón). Legally, Morena now has 48 hours to replace both candidates.

Morena and AMLO are very pissed, with the president saying it is a 'blow to democracy' and he is sure to double down on his attacks on the INE with threat of some revenge electoral reform after the elections. LPO reports that internally, the presidency and Morena are worried that Salgado will react violently and that, in the absence of a plan B in Guerrero, AMLO allegedly doesn't want to replace Salgado. One idea which had been circulating recently is having one of Salgado's daughters replace him, and then perhaps have a 'Juanita' scenario like in Iztapalapa in 2009 (the stand-in candidate-winner resigning, being replaced by the ejected candidate).

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Morena has formally nominated rapey Félix Salgado's daughter Evelyn Salgado as candidate in Guerrero. She was president of the municipal Integral Family Development department (DIF) when her father was mayor of Acapulco and she was 22, and she is currently delegate of the women's secretariat in Acapulco. Her candidacy was supported by her father, which led to claims of 'imposition' by her rivals in the hastily organized 'polling' conducted to determine the replacement candidacy, most notably senator Nestora Salgado (no relation). The senator questioned Evelyn Salgado's merits, her lack of experience and her lack of activism. Félix Salgado responded to claim that he wanted to impose his daughter by saying that such claims are 'gender violence against women', which I'm not sure is something you should say if you're accused of rape. She also has her own controversies: her husband is the son of Joaquín Alonso 'El Abulón' who was arrested in 2016 suspected of being a financial operator for the Beltrán Leyva cartel.

Rapey Salgado has denied that his daughter is a 'Juanita', claiming that he will return to his seat in the Senate.

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Not sure if there's any interest for actual effortposts around here, but I am working on previews of all gubernatorial races this year. Here are the first two.

Baja California

Baja California famously became, in 1989, the first state to be won by another party than the PRI, with the victory of the panista Ernesto Ruffo Appel. Baja California was a panista stronghold for 30 years – the PAN held the governorship for five successive terms, between 1989 and 2019.

In 2018, however, the PAN was annihilated in its former stronghold by Morena. AMLO won 63.9% in the state and his coalition carried all 8 federal districts. In the 2019 gubernatorial election, Jaime Bonilla (Morena), a businessman who had previously been a Republican member of the Otay Mesa water district board, was elected governor with 50% of the vote (although with turnout below 30%). Morena also won all five municipalities and a comfortable majority in the state congress.

A 2014 constitutional amendment had reduced the term of the governor elected in 2019 from six to two years, to align state elections with federal elections from 2021. Bonilla opposed this and tried to challenge the shortened term in the electoral courts. Shortly after his election, the outgoing state congress – with a PAN majority – adopted a constitutional amendment extending the gubernatorial term from two years to five years. It was said that the ley Bonilla, as the term extension was known, was part of an ‘impunity pact’ between the incoming governor and the outgoing PAN governor, Kiko Vega, who is implicated in several controversies and scandals.

This ley Bonilla was extremely controversial. The national leaderships of the PAN, PRI, PRD and MC began to expel their state deputies who had voted in favour. The issue became a nightmare for the federal government, with certain voices in Morena clearly opposed to it while AMLO tried to avoid it as best he could. In December 2019, the federal electoral court (TEPJF) ruled the amendment unconstitutional – a decision which AMLO said he ‘respected’. In May 2020, the Supreme Court (SCJN) dealt the ley Bonilla its final blow by ruling it to be unconstitutional.

There is rather widespread agreement that Bonilla has been a disastrous governor, an opinion even shared by some within his own party. The homicide rate remained extremely high (over 80 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2019 and 2020, with over 2,600 homicides), amidst narco turf wars in Tijuana. The state has been significantly more indebted, and he increased taxes. Bonilla, who has repeatedly clashed with businessmen, is now trying to expropriate without compensation the Tijuana country club to turn into a large public park.

The candidates:

Marina del Pilar (Morena-PT-PVEM): Morena’s candidate is Marina del Pilar (35 years old), the former mayor of Mexicali (2019-2021) and former federal deputy (2018-2019). She was elected mayor of Mexicali in 2019, one year after she was elected federal deputy for Baja California’s 2nd district. In 2019, she married ex-PAN state deputy Carlos Torres Torres, who was among those who pushed for the approval of the ley Bonilla, for which he was expelled from the PAN.

She won Morena’s nomination against several other candidates, notably the mayor of Ensenada Armando Ayala (supported by Bonilla) and the mayor of Tijuana and Bonilla’s enemy, Arturo González Cruz. Marina del Pilar is trying to balance the governor’s support with his relative unpopularity. Bonilla managed to secure Morena’s mayoral candidacies for his allies in Ensenada, Playas de Rosarito, Tecate and Tijuana – where the candidate is state deputy Monserrat Caballero, famous for drinking beer during a virtual session of the state congress in 2020. Arturo González Cruz, who resigned as mayor of Tijuana in February 2021, is now running for federal deputy for the PVEM.

Lupita Jones (PAN-PRI-PRD): The candidate of the opposition Va por Baja California coalition is Miss Universe 1991 María Guadalupe ‘Lupita’ Jones. Jones is the current franchise holder of the Mexicana Universal beauty pageant. In 2018, she was accused of transphobia after saying that transgender women should not compete in beauty pageants and that transgender women ‘are not the same’ She has no prior political experience and has said that she has never read a book about politics. Instead, she tries to sell herself as an independent citizen with no political baggage.

The opposition coalition had a difficult time settling on a candidate. The local PRI supported the controversial former PRI mayor of Tijuana, Jorge Hank Rhon, but much of the local PAN – most notably Ernesto Ruffo, a regular critic of his party’s leadership and strategy – was strongly opposed. In the PAN, the names of former mayor of Tijuana Héctor Osuna and senator Gina Cruz circulated. The coalition agreement, on the grounds of legal requirements for gender parity, stated that the gubernatorial candidate would be a woman. Lupita Jones was the coalition’s last-ditch compromise candidate, seen as the only candidate with which the three parties would at least stand a fighting chance.

With Lupita Jones’ candidacy (and her background as a beauty queen), there’s been no shortage of misogynistic, sexist or macho comments. Bonilla said that the election wasn’t a beauty contest, but that in any case Marina del Pilar – who he describes as very beautiful and very intelligent – would win a beauty contest. The governor also accused the PAN of wanting to ‘exploit the beauty of Lupita Jones’. Jones thanked the governor for considering that she’s still beautiful 30 years after the Miss Universe contest.

Jorge Hank Rhon (PES): Hank Rhon, a very colourful, eccentric and controversial businessman and the former PRI mayor of Tijuana (2004-2007), is running for governor for the Partido Encuentro Solidario (PES). Hank is the son of Carlos Hank González – former governor of Edomex (1969-1975), head of government of the Federal District (1976-1982) and cabinet secretary under Carlos Salinas – and considered as a ‘founder’ or ‘adopted son’ of the powerful Grupo Atlacomulco. His brother, Carlos Hank Rhon, is a billionaire and one of the wealthiest men in Mexico.

Jorge Hank settled in Tijuana and is the owner of the Grupo Caliente, which owns the Agua Caliente racetrack, a dog track, a private zoo, hotels, a chain of casinos and the city’s professional football club, Club Tijuana. In 2004, he was elected mayor of Tijuana for the PRI. He was the PRI coalition’s gubernatorial candidate in 2007, losing the election to the PAN by about 6%.

A controversial figure, Hank Rhon has been accused of ties to drug trafficking, money laundering and murder. He has been implicated in the murder of his son’s girlfriend in 2009, as well as the 1988 assassination of a critical local journalist, killed by two security guards employed by Hank’s companies. In 2011, Hank was arrested after the army found over 80 firearms and over 9,000 cartridges in one of his properties, including two guns linked to homicides. However, he was released shortly afterwards, in what was another major blow to the credibility of the Mexican judicial system.

The eccentric Hank owns hundreds of exotic animals, was detained at the airport in the 1990s for carrying items made from endangered animals in his luggage and is accused of participating in the illegal trade of endangered species.

Jorge Hank has been married four times and has 21 biological or adoptive children. His current wife is 34 years younger than him. He has a long history of sexist and misogynistic comments. Back in 2004, he said that his favourite animal was still ‘the woman’. This year, Hank complained that women had become a bit less intelligent. After that comment, he was seen attending a class on ‘gender and equal oral expression’, although it doesn’t seem to have been of much use because he recently confused femicides with ‘women becoming hitmen’.

After being rejected by the PRI and the opposition coalition, Hank tried to woo the local state party (PBC) and looked to the two new parties (FxM and RSP) before finally registering as the gubernatorial candidate for the PES. He is supported by many local PRI supporters, as well as PT (ex-Morena) senator Alejandra León Gastélum. Some in the PAN also believe that Felipe Calderón and his entourage are quietly supporting Hank.

Governor Bonilla has repeatedly attack Hank during the campaign. Earlier in April, after a video from the CJNG threatening the governor and other state officials, Bonilla accused Hank of being the leader of the cartel in the state and of being the ‘biggest criminal’ in the history of the state. In the past, Hank Rhon had also been accused of ties to the Tijuana Cartel of the Arellano Félix brothers.

Other candidates: The other candidates are former senator (2010-12) Alcibíades García (MC), Jorge Ojeda (FxM), Victoria Bentley (RSP) and Carlos Atilano for the local Party of Baja California (PBC). The PBC is an old state-level party which ran alone in 2019 but was allied with the PAN in 2013 and with the PRI in 2007. It is a centrist party with ties to the state’s business community, and it is opposed to Morena.

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Marina del Pilar has been leading in nearly all the polls, although there have been rather few polls from reputable firms. In some polls, Hank is second of Lupita Jones, and in any case it is clear that Jones’ candidacy never took off and is stagnating.

Morena is confident that, like in 2018 and 2019, it will win everything (carro completo) – all municipalities, all 8 federal districts and a majority in the state congress. The closest mayoral race may be in Tijuana, where Morena candidate Monserrat Caballero (see above) is facing former mayor (2007-2010) Jorge Ramos (PAN-PRI-PRD).

The PES candidate was supposed to be retired lieutenant colonel Julián Leyzaola, the controversial former police chief of Tijuana in the early 2000s – credited with ‘cleaning up’ the city from high criminality and drug trafficking – and later police chief in Juárez later in the 2010s. Leyzaola has been facing accusations of torture for over 7 years. He ran in the last two mayoral elections in Tijuana, in 2016 (for the PES) and in 2019 (for the PRD), finishing second both times. Upon seeking to obtain proof of residency for his candidacy this year, Leyzaola was informed that there is an arrest warrant (from state prosecutors) for torture against him and he is currently a fugitive. The PES attempted to register his candidacy, but his registration was unsurprisingly rejected. He was ultimately replaced by his daughter Indira. It's unclear if this is a 'Juanito' scenario, and where it leaves rumours that there were attempts at consolidating split-ticket voting (voto cruzado) between Hank and Ramos. Jorge Ramos has publicly defended Leyzaola, saying that he shouldn’t be facing charges and the government should be going after criminals. This would suggest that he was looking to get Hank and the PES to agree to a voto cruzado between the two.


Baja California Sur

The PRI lost the sparsely populated state in 1999, to the PRD, which held it for two successive terms (1999-2005, 2005-2011), before losing to the PAN which has now governed BCS for two successive terms (2011-2015, 2015-2021). The incumbent governor is Carlos Mendoza Davis (PAN), elected in 2015.

In 2018, AMLO won 64% in BCS and his coalition won both of the state’s lower house single-member districts. Morena also won a majority in the state congress and 3 of the 5 municipalities, including the state capital La Paz and the resort towns of Los Cabos.
However, this year, the PAN is favoured to retain the governorship. The candidate of the Unidos contigo coalition – PAN, PRI, PRD and two local parties (PHBCS, PRS) – is Francisco ‘Pancho’ Pelayo (PAN). Pelayo is the nephew of former PAN governor Marcos Alberto Covarrubias (2011-2015). He was federal deputy between 2012 and 2015, and mayor of Comondú between 2015 and 2018.

The Morena-PT candidate is Víctor Manuel Castro. Castro, elected to the Senate in 2018, had been serving since AMLO’s inauguration as the federal government’s superdelegate, or ‘state coordinator for social programs’, a controversial position created by AMLO officially to coordinate delivery of social programs in the states. Castro is a veteran politician and trade unionist, and a founding member of Morena in 2014. He served as state education secretary (2002-2004), mayor of La Paz (2005-2008) and federal deputy (2009-2012). He was Morena’s gubernatorial candidate in 2015, finishing fourth with 6.4%. His nomination, announced in December 2020, was poorly received by at least two of the other pre-candidates: Alejandro Lage, who is running for a new local party, and the mayor of La Paz, Rubén Muñoz Álvarez, who reportedly shouted and stormed out of the meeting when Castro’s nomination was confirmed.

The PVEM candidate is the ex-Morena mayor of Los Cabos Armida Castro Guzmán, who left Morena in March 2021. There are 7 other candidates including Adonai Carreón (PES) and Andrea Marcela Geiger (MC).

All polls in April have had the PAN’s candidate, Pelayo, ahead – either narrowly or more comfortably – of Castro.

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Campeche

Campeche, the leading oil producing state in Mexico, is one of the few remaining states which has always been governed by the PRI. The former governor (2015-2019), Alejandro ‘Alito’ Moreno, has been national leader of the PRI since 2019. His main advantage in winning the leadership was, besides the support of PRI governors, his existing electoral structure and strength, so he will be under intense pressure to prove that he can retain his state in priista hands.

In 2018, AMLO won 61.2% in Campeche.

Moreno is said to have conditioned a national coalition with the PAN and PRD to the imposition of his candidate in Campeche, and the withdrawal of the PAN’s putative candidate. Over the local opposition of the PAN, the coalition was formed, and its candidate is Moreno’s nephew, Christian Castro, state secretary of social development since 2019. Castro owes his political career to Alito Moreno, and this attempt at nepotistic dynastic succession may explain why the PRI’s candidate is struggling in the polls.

The PAN’s original candidate (in coalition with MC), sacrificed by his party for the sake of the alliance with the PRI, was Eliseo Fernández, mayor of Campeche (the state capital) since 2018, somewhat well regarded as mayor though he did promote hydroxychloroquine during the pandemic. Fernández is now running for the MC. Fernández says that he supports AMLO and the ‘fourth transformation’ (4T), and he promises a ‘total change’ – claiming both of his main opponents are linked to the PRI.

The Morena-PT coalition’s candidate is Layda Sansores, former mayor of Álvaro Obregón in CDMX (2018-2012), former senator (1994-2000, 2012-2018) and former federal deputy (1991-1994, 2006-2009). She is the daughter of former PRI governor Carlos Sansores Pérez (1967-1973), a close ally of President Luis Echeverría who later went on to serve as national leader of the PRI (1976-1979). She already unsuccessfully ran for governor in 1997 (for the PRD, 41%), 2003 (for Convergencia, now MC, 14%) and 2015 (for Morena, 17.8%). In 2018, while she was senator, the media revealed that she charged about 700,000 pesos in expenses unrelated to her legislative work (dolls, pillows, appliances, food, clothing, hair dye etc.). She won the Morena nomination against senator Rocío Abreu, elected in 2018 for the PRI-PANAL but who defected shortly thereafter to Morena.

Sansores, who is fairly unpopular, was criticized for her poor record in Álvaro Obregón in CDMX and for leaving that office to run for governor in another state. Her opponents in the state claim that the real ‘owner’ of Morena in Campeche is former PRI governor Fernando Ortega Bernés (2009-2015).

Morena’s mayoral candidate in Campeche is Renato Sales, former state prosecutor (2009-2013) and national security commissioner under EPN (2015-2018). An effective public servant, he is one of the few EPN-era public servants well regarded by the 4T – he was, after all, sub-prosecutor in the DF when AMLO was head of government there.

Once again, the real state of affairs is muddied by the proliferation of very prolific pollsters with limited track records or proven credibility, but Sansores seems to have lost her early advantage with polls showing a close three-way race between Fernández (MC), Castro (PRI) and Sansores. The PRI is clearly very worried about this: Rubén Moreira, the former governor of Coahuila who is seen as the PRI’s best electoral operator, has been dispatched to Campeche to organize the fight.

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Chihuahua

The largest state in Mexico, Chihuahua was among the PAN’s first strongholds, winning major local victories from the early 1980s. The contested (rigged) 1986 gubernatorial election, and the PAN’s protests afterwards, marked a turning point in post-electoral mobilizations in Mexico and presaged the opposition protests after the 1988 elections. The PAN gained Chihuahua in 1992, its second formal electoral victory after BC*, but the PRI regained the state in 1998 – and held it in 2004 and 2010. The PAN regained the state in 2016, with the victory of former senator Javier Corral with 39.7% of the vote against 30.7% for the PRI.

AMLO won the state with 43.1% in 2018, against 28.5% for Anaya (PAN-PRD-MC) and 16.1% for Meade (PRI-PVEM-PANAL).

The PRI governor between 2010 and 2016 was the infamously corrupt César Duarte. Duarte was already controversial during his term for accusations of corruption and nepotism and leaving behind one of the most deeply indebted states in Mexico. After leaving office, he fled the country to the US, escaping accusations of embezzling over 275 million pesos.

Javier Corral’s administration opened nearly 40 criminal investigations into Duarte and his clientelist networks and issued several arrest warrants against the former governor. Corral accused the Peña Nieto administration of dragging its feet in requesting Duarte’s extradition and complained of alleged reprisals by the federal government for his prosecutor’s investigations. In January 2018, the federal government finally requested Duarte’s extradition for all the crimes of which he is accused. In July 2020, Duarte was arrested in Miami – coincidentally while AMLO was visiting Trump in Washington.

Javier Corral has long been critical of his party’s leadership and hasn’t minced his words when it comes to certain panistas, most notably Felipe Calderón. There have been persistent rumours for some time that he has explored launching his own party, and he has presidential ambitions in 2024. Since 2018, he has been one of the most prominent opposition governors. He is a member of the Federalist Alliance – a grouping of 10 opposition governors which has clashed with AMLO on the management of the pandemic and demanded a revision of federal transfers to the states. In September 2020, the Federalist Alliance governors also quit the National Governors’ Conference (CONAGO).

In 2020, local water conflicts erupted with farmers – backed by Corral – occupying La Boquilla dam. Under the 1944 water treaty with the US, Mexico must send some water from the Rio Grande and its tributaries to the US, and Mexico was behind on its obligations and needed to release water from dams in Chihuahua. However, after one of the driest years in 3 decades, local farmers and Corral said that there would not be enough water for agriculture. Tensions escalated in September 2020, as farmers seized the dam, closed the valves and fought with the National Guard, resulting in the death of two farmers, presumably killed by the National Guard. AMLO accused Corral, other local politicians and big agriculture ‘mafias’ of hoarding water, fomenting strife and using the water conflict for political purposes, endangering relations with the US. Corral denied AMLO’s accusations, saying the president was being dishonest and sowing hatred.

In 2017, investigations discovered that Duarte maintained a large ‘secret payroll’ through which he bribed over 100 people including PRI and opposition politicians, journalists, activists, businessmen and religious figures. Among them, according to Corral, were certain panistas including the two-term mayor of Chihuahua (the state capital) and gubernatorial hopeful, María Eugenia ‘Maru’ Campos. The state prosecutor’s office opened an investigation against her last summer.

Campos claimed that the investigation was political persecution by Corral and believed that he wanted to imprison her to destroy her gubernatorial candidacy, and favour of that of his ally, senator Gustavo Madero. One of her assistants accused Corral’s attorney general of “fabricating accusations and evidence” and pressuring a star witness to testify. Maru Campos won a landslide victory in the PAN’s internal primary in January, winning 61.9% against 37.5% for Madero. Her victory was a major blow to Corral (and his presidential ambitions), who had tried to stop her at all costs – but in doing so, he may have ended up victimizing her, and allowing her to rally all of his enemies and rivals within the party around her.

María Eugenia ‘Maru’ Campos is the PAN-PRD’s candidate. She has also been endorsed by Calderón. Corral remains furious with the results and has continued to publicly denounce Campos’ ties to Duarte and accuse the PAN leadership of protecting obvious cases of corruption. He has also criticized the PAN’s alliance with the PRI nationally, claiming that the PAN has abandoned its values and principles.

In early April, a judge charged Maru Campos with bribery, accused of receiving 10.3 million pesos from Duarte’s secret payroll between 2014 and 2016, when she was a PAN state deputy. The judge accepted the evidence (receipts) presented by the state prosecutor and her defence was unable to prove that the receipts were false. Campos stated that her political rights as a candidate were not affected, and the PAN and PRD’s leaderships closed ranks behind her. Campos and her allies have claimed that Corral is supporting Morena, which he denies.

The Morena-PT-PANAL candidate is federal deputy Juan Carlos Loera, former federal ‘superdelegate’ in the state (2018-2020). Loera is under investigation for ‘premature campaigning’ – accused of using his office as superdelegate to promote his image through personalized cards with the logo the Secretariat of Welfare and conditioning social programs to electoral support for him in 2021.

Loera was selected as Morena’s candidate over senator Cruz Pérez Cuéllar – a former PAN federal deputy and MC gubernatorial candidate in 2016. Pérez Cuéllar got the mayoral candidate in Juárez as a consolation prize. Pérez Cuéllar is among the alleged beneficiaries of Duarte’s secret payroll with 2.5 million pesos received between 2013 and 2015, money which was used to fund his 2016 gubernatorial campaign. In December 2020, the state prosecutors requested his desafuero and issued an arrest warrant, but in late April 2021, federal deputies rejected his desafuero.

Despite all of this (and the fact that the state PT was a long-time ally of the PRI and Duarte (as recently as 2016) and that the outgoing independent mayor of Juárez, Armando Cabada, now Morena ‘pluri’ congressional candidate) Loera and Morena reacted to Campos’ indictment by branding her part of the corruptos de siempre (same old corrupt bunch) and preaching about honest government.

The PRI’s candidate is former senator Graciela Ortiz González. Ortiz was secretary-general of the state government under Duarte (2010-2012) and later secretary-general of the PRI. She is also implicated in the secret payroll scandal, but no charges seem to have been filed against her.

Corral may be supporting the MC’s candidate, Alfredo Lozoya, mayor of Hidalgo del Parral. The MC’s mayoral candidate in Chihuahua, Campos’ home base, is ex-PAN federal deputy Miguel Riggs, a known ally of the governor.

Other candidates are Brenda Ríos (PVEM), Luis Carlos Arrieta (PES), María Eugenia Baeza (RSP) and Alejandro Díaz (FxM).

The election is expected to be tight, but Maru Campos has a narrow advantage in nearly all polls. A recent poll published in El Financiero had her leading Loera by 6 points, 40% to 36%.

* A panista was elected interim governor of Guanajuato by the state congress in 1991, following a controversial election and PRI-PAN negotiations at the highest level in the capital.

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Colima

The least populated state in the union, Colima is another of the few remaining members of the ‘always PRI’ club – states that have always had PRI governors. Although that may very well change this year.

The incumbent governor is José Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Peralta (PRI), elected in a special election in 2016 after the TEPJF cancelled the 2015 election. The 2015 election was cancelled after the PAN, which had lost by less than 0.2%, denounced a video in which the secretary of social development was seeking votes for Peralta from the state’s public administration. Peralta won the 2016 rematch by a wider margin against PAN senator Jorge Luis Preciado.

‘Nacho’ Peralta is a member of the opposition governors’ Federalist Alliance. Under his administration, Colima has suffered from a wave of violence and it had the highest homicide rate of any state in 2019, and the second highest in 2020. Peralta is one of the least popular governors in Mexico.

AMLO won a clear victory in the state in 2020, with nearly 58%.

The candidate to beat is Morena’s Indira Vizcaíno, former federal superdelegate in Colima (2018-2020). Vizcaíno is only 34 but has already been PRD federal deputy (2009-2012), mayor of Cuauhtémoc (2012-2015), state secretary of social development (2016-2017) and federal deputy (2018). In 2016, she worked for Peralta’s gubernatorial campaign. Vizcaíno has been linked to former PRI senator and incumbent PRI state deputy Rogelio Rueda Sánchez, and several former priistas are among Morena’s local candidates.

The PT and PVEM are running separately, each with their own candidates – Aurora Díaz for the PT, which had initially wanted senator Joel Padilla Peña as their candidate; and former panista mayor of Manzanillo and former PVEM federal deputy Virgilio Mendoza for the PVEM. In addition, despite AMLO’s efforts to mediate, FxM – a new party owned by former Morena senator Pedro Haces – is running ex-Morena federal deputy Claudia Yáñez, who had quit Morena after losing the gubernatorial nomination in a selection process she considered a ‘farce’. Claudia Yáñez is the sister of César Yáñez, a longtime ally of the president who is currently a member of the presidential office.

To defeat Morena, traditional rivals – the PAN and the PRI (as well as the very much irrelevant PRD) – have formed a coalition, like elsewhere. They understood that it’s their best chance to save some political offices for the various PRI and PAN factions. The coalition’s candidate is Mely Romero Celis, who was one of the young faces of EPN’s ‘new PRI’ – she was senator (2012-2016) and undersecretary for rural development in EPN’s cabinet (2016-2018). She is from the local PRI faction led by former governor Fernando Moreno Peña (1997-2003).

The PAN’s gubernatorial candidate in 2015 and 2016, Preciado, is now running for mayor of Manzanillo, the state’s largest municipality, against a Morena incumbent who said in a campaign event that Preciado should be stoned. The sister-in-law of outgoing governor ‘Nacho’ Peralta is the mayoral candidate in Colima, the state capital.

The third candidate with a fighting chance is the MC’s Leoncio ‘Locho’ Morán – two-time mayor of Colima (2003-2006, 2018-2021), PAN gubernatorial candidate in 2005 (second with 47.6%) and MC gubernatorial candidate in 2015 and 2016 (third with 11.9% and 12.1%). In 2018, he was elected mayor of the state capital for MC. Morán’s campaign is targeting Indira Vizcaíno, whom he calls the ‘candidate of the PRI disguised as Morena’ and the ‘candidate of corruption’.

Vizcaíno is the favourite, leading nearly every single poll, although her lead may have narrowed recently. The latest poll from El Financiero showed her leading Romero by 9, 37% to 28%, with Morán third with 17%. In their previous poll, in April, Vizcaíno was up by 15.

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How come PRI is now allied with PAN?

Because the three old parties - weakened, discredited, divided and directionless - realized that they needed to form coalitions in order to have a chance at defeating, or more realistically, weakening and limiting the strength of Morena & friends in the congressional election and in most state/local elections. The PRI, PAN and PRD all share a common interest in opposing AMLO and his coalition, and this common interest far outweighs any historical enmity between those parties.

When the PRI was the party to beat (until 2018 or earlier), the PAN and PRD were often allied. Now that Morena is the new party to beat, then the old parties have interest in working together.

Of course that doesn't mean that there was no internal resistance to this stitch-up. AMLO got elected in a landslide by attacking the 'PRIAN', so perhaps actually forming a real 'PRIAN' (+ increasingly moribund PRD) is maybe not the best idea to fighting off perceptions that all the old parties are the mafia del poder. But the leadership of the PRI, PAN and PRD are (a) not very smart, (b) opportunistic and (c) very much motivated by saving their own personal interests and saving as many elected sinecures as possible.

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Guerrero

Guerrero is one of the poorest states in Mexico and has a long history of nefarious ties between politics and the criminal underworld, as made clear to the world by the tragic events of Ayotzinapa/Iguala in 2014 (although the truth about Iguala likely goes much higher and doesn’t just involve criminal local politicians…).

The first non-priista governor of Guerrero was Zeferino Torreblanca (PRD), elected in 2005. However, the 1999 election – in which the PRI officially defeated the PRD’s candidate, one Félix Salgado Macedonio by less than 2%, was marred by allegations of fraud by Salgado, who undertook a week-long trek from Chilpancingo to Mexico City to pressure the courts to overturn the election, and then staged an ‘indefinite civil resistance’ when the courts did not. Salgado, elected to Congress in 2000, became mayor of Acapulco in 2005. Torreblanca and Salgado’s administrations were disappointing – violence and kidnappings increased significantly in the coastal city and across the state, and the governor was investigated for budgetary irregularities.

In 2011, the PRD’s candidate was Ángel Aguirre – a former interim governor (1996-1999), accused by Salgado and AMLO at the time of being the operator of the fraud in 1999 – who had quit the PRI after failing to win its nomination. Aguirre was elected with 55.6%.
Aguirre’s administration was catastrophic, characterized by an increase in violence, criminal narco-politics, corruption and his inefficiency in handling two natural disasters in 2013, and culminated with the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa students. Aguirre was forced to resign a month after the events in Iguala. Aguirre is notably accused of having known and covered up Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca’s narco ties.

In 2015, the PRI returned to power, with the victory of Héctor Astudillo Flores, who had been defeated by Torreblanca ten years earlier.

AMLO won by a large margin 2018 – with 63% of the vote. Morena won 8 of the state’s 9 single-member districts in the Chamber of Deputies, and Félix Salgado/Nestora Salgado senatorial ticket got 48% of the vote. Morena also won a majority in the state congress, although the PRI and PRD retained the most municipalities.

A large field of prominent candidates sought Morena’s nomination – including Félix Salgado, Nestora Salgado, Adela Román (mayor of Acapulco since 2018), Pablo Amílcar Sandoval (Morena gubernatorial candidate in 2015, former superdelegate and brother of Irma Eréndira, the federal secretary of public administration), Beatriz Mojica (PRD gubernatorial candidate in 2015 and former general secretary of the PRD) and Luis Walton Aburto (former mayor of Acapulco 2012-2015 and MC gubernatorial candidate in 2015). Félix Salgado insisted that the candidacy was his, and threatened Morena by actively looking elsewhere – to the PT and the MC. He also accused the leader of Morena, Mario Delgado, of favouritism towards Pablo Amílcar.

Salgado has a long history of colourful scandals and controversies – he once defined himself as a “womanizer, partygoer, player and drunk”, he fought with cops while drunk and released several folk music covers (most notably a 2012 cumbia in AMLO’s honour).

In December 2020, Félix Salgado was announced as Morena’s candidate. He was already facing accusations of sexual abuse, first revealed in November in Milenio. More accusations followed, weakening his candidacy as more and more people – including within Morena – calling for the cancellation of his candidacy. While in February 2021 Morena’s ethics commission considered the accusations against him to be unfounded, it also suspended his candidacy and reopened the selection process – although with Félix Salgado still participating.

Félix Salgado’s candidacy was reconfirmed in this new selection process in March, in which most original candidates participated again – with the notable exception of Pablo Amílcar. Throughout this entire process, Salgado had AMLO’s unwavering support. AMLO repeatedly claimed that the accusations against Salgado were part of a smear campaign by the ‘conservatives’ and the media, and even attacked feminists by saying that phrases like “breaking the patriarchy” were ‘imported’. While Salgado’s candidacy was under fire from all sides, he violently threatened that without him on the ballot there would no election in Guerrero and that it would be the INE’s last election.

The TEPJF confirmed the INE’s revocation of his candidacy (see previous posts). After a ‘poll’, Morena nominated his daughter Evelyn Salgado as their gubernatorial candidate. As previously noted, her husband is the son of Joaquín Alonso Piedra 'El Abulón' who was arrested in 2016 suspected of being a financial operator for the Beltrán Leyva cartel.

The PT and PVEM broke the coalition with Morena after the Salgado scandal. Instead, they nominated Pedro Segura Valladares, a wealthy rancher from Teloloapan with possible ties to the Familia Michoacana cartel.

The PRI and PRD – traditional rivals for over 20 years – have now formed a coalition to defeat Morena. The coalition’s candidate is Mario Moreno Arcos (PRI), former secretary of social development (2018-2020), two-time mayor of Chilpancingo (2006-2008, 2012-2015) and former federal deputy (2003-2006, 2009-2012). Moreno’s candidacy is pushed by former governor (1999-2005) and incumbent federal deputy René Juárez and former governor Ángel Aguirre (2011-2014); he defeated senator Manuel Añorve Baños, the PRI’s 2011 candidate, who had been backed by incumbent governor Astudillo and former governor Rubén Figueroa (1992-1996). Astudillo was compensated by having several of his allies, including his son, placed as candidates for the state congress.

Moreno is the cousin of the spokesperson of ‘Los Tlacos’, a criminal paramilitary group, and of José Carlos ‘La Calentura’ Moreno Flores, arrested in 2011 and accused of El Chapo’s operator in Guerrero. In 2014, Moreno was accused by the head of the local chamber of commerce of providing protection to the criminal group ‘Los Rojos’. Shortly thereafter, the businessman was the victim of an attack in which his daughter-in-law was killed.

The PAN, always very weak in the state, is running alone with Irma Garzón. The MC’s candidate is Ruth Zavaleta, former federal deputy (2006-2009, 2012-2015). Zavaleta is running as a feminist candidate, pledging to break the ‘patriarchal pact’.

There have been rumours that the PAN and MC’s leaderships have considered withdrawing to support Mario Moreno, to defeat Salgado. There also were rumours that Pablo Amílcar – now Morena’s congressional candidate in the 4th district – has negotiated with governor Astudillo to divide Salgado’s vote. Amílcar has been conspicuously absent from the Salgado father and daughter campaign. On the other hand, Evelyn Salgado has welcomed the support of Astudillo’s cousin and PRI state deputy Jorge Salgado Parra (mad that he didn’t get the PRI mayoral nomination in Chilpancingo)

FxM’s candidate is Manuel Negrete, a former footballer and until recently mayor of Coyoacán in CDMX (2018-2021), elected for the PRD. In Coyoacán, Negrete was accused of corruption and incompetence.

Salgado – father and now daughter – have always been the favourites to win. Félix Salgado’s polling numbers seem to have been largely unaffected by the sexual abuse and rape accusations. Evelyn Salgado has retained a consistent advantage over Moreno. However, the last poll by El Financiero, conducted in mid-April, showed Morena’s lead over the PRI down to just 4 points, compared to a 15-point lead in March.

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Nuevo León: current PRI rebel (El Bronco): tossup between MORENA-PT-PVEM and PRI-PRD

In what world? Clara Luz Flores is very far behind in every poll, ever since late March, and the race very clearly is between Adrián de la Garza and Samuel García -- the latter may have an edge, although the number of polls by less reputable pollsters giving wildly different numbers makes it all quite messy. If the PAN does manage to finish strong, as some polls could suggest, after having been counted for dead for the entire campaign, there's even a chance that Clara Luz Flores would be pushed into fourth place.

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Michoacán

Michoacán is the historic stronghold and cradle of the PRD – Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, legendary leader of the modern Mexican left, was governor of Michoacán between 1980 and 1986.

The PRD, however, did not actually win the governorship until 2001. The 1992 and 1995 gubernatorial elections, particularly the former, were marred by allegations of fraud and followed by post-electoral mobilizations and violence by the PRD. In 1992, high-level negotiations between the local PRD and the PRI regime broke down and Carlos Salinas was clearly unwilling to extend the same ‘courtesies’ to the PRD as he was to the PAN. The only change was that the priista governor-elect in 1992 was forced to resign amidst perredista civil disobedience but was replaced with another PRI hardliner and authorities stepped in to restore ‘order’.

The PRD finally won Michoacán in 2001 with the victory of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’ son, Lázaro Cárdenas Batel. The PRD retained control in 2007, with Leonel Godoy. In 2011, the PRI regained the state with the victory of Fausto Vallejo.

For over 15 years, Michoacán has suffered from violence and failed governance. It was where, in December 2006, president-elect Calderón – a native of Michoacán – launched a military operation against drug cartels, marking the beginning of the bloody and failed drug war. In 2009, Calderón’s government arrested about three dozen state and local officials including 11 mayors, accused of ties to the Familia Michoacana cartel, then the dominant criminal group in the state. However, within two years, all of the accused in the Michoacanazo were released and acquitted. To this day, there are two versions of the event – Calderón claims it was proof of widespread impunity and corruption in the judicial system, while PRD governor Godoy argues it was a political operation aimed at discrediting the PRD and favouring Calderón’s sister, Luisa María Calderón in the 2011 election.

Fausto Vallejo, the priista governor elected in 2011, was a disaster: facing health problems, he asked for three leaves before definitely resigning in June 2014. The interim governor in 2013, Jesús Reyna, was later arrested, accused of ties to the Knights Templar cartel, but was released in 2018 when prosecutors were unable to prove his guilt. Vallejo’s son Rodrigo ‘El Gerber’ was arrested in 2014 and rearrested in 2019, accused of ties to Servando Gómez ‘La Tuta’, leader of the Knights Templar (arrested in 2015). As violence spread, local self-defence vigilante groups (autodefensas) emerged, led by local businessmen, rival criminals and exasperated civilians. In 2014, Peña Nieto appointed Alfredo Castillo, ‘the viceroy’, as some sort of special envoy who served as de facto governor.

The PRD’s Silvano Aureoles, former senator and federal deputy, was elected governor in 2015 with 36.2% against 27.8% for the PRI and 23.8% for the PAN (once again Calderón’s sister). Despite promises to the contrary, Aureoles has had little success in turning the tide of violence: in 2020, homicide rates reached 50, a record high. Uruapan, the state’s second-largest city, is one of the most violent cities in Mexico now, ravaged by fighting between the CJNG and two local groups, Los Viagras and the Cartel del Abuelo (whose leader began by leading an autodefensa group).

Like elsewhere, the PRD has been decimated and lost most of its traditional leaders – Cárdenas Batel, Godoy and Arias have all joined Morena. In 2018, AMLO won 50% of the vote, against 22.4% for Anaya and 17% for Meade (who had received Aureoles’ endorsement).

Aureoles is the PRD’s last standing governor. He is a member of the Federalist Alliance, the grouping of opposition governors, and has often butted heads with AMLO.

Morena-PT’s initial candidate, nominated in December 2020, was Raúl Morón, mayor of Morelia (2018-2021), former PRD senator (2012-2018) and former leader of the state PRD in the early 2000s. Morón is a teacher and was the leader of the local section of the teacher’s union, the SNTE, in the mid-1990s. In March, his candidacy was revoked by the INE for not reporting pre-campaign expenses, and it was upheld on appeal by the TEPJF in April.

Morón’s case was overshadowed by the more controversial case of Félix Salgado in Guerrero. Morón’s reaction was also far more measured than Salgado’s – while regretting the INE’s decision as excessive, arbitrary and illegal he called on supporters to protest peacefully without violence.

He was replaced by state deputy Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla, who had previously worked under former governors Cárdenas Batel and Godoy. Ironically, Ramírez’s mayoral candidacy in Morelia was also cancelled and sanctioned by the INE in March, again for not reporting pre-campaign expenses.

As a bizarre sidenote, Morena’s mayoral candidacy in Huetamo appears on the DEA’s list of most wanted fugitives and is described as ‘armed and dangerous’. He is the brother of the incumbent Morena mayor of Zirándaro (Guerrero).

Morena senator Cristóbal Arias is running for FxM (Force for Mexico), the new party controlled by former senator Pedro Haces. Cristóbal Arias was the PRD gubernatorial candidate in 1992 and 1995, he also served as federal deputy (1982-1985, 1991-1994) and senator (1988-1991, 1994-2000, 2018-2021). He was initially perceived as the favourite to win Morena’s nomination but lost to Morón. He questioned the transparency of the selection process and claimed that Morón was imposed by the traditional ‘mafia of power’ in Michoacán – namely former governors Cárdenas Batel (now coordinator of advisors in the presidential office) and Godoy (now congressional candidate in the 1st district). He looked to the PT, PVEM and RSP before getting FxM’s support for his dissident candidacy.

Morón’s team saw Arias’ hand in his disqualification by the INE because one of the INE councillors is the ex-husband of Arias’ sister, although they divorced in 2003.

The PRD has a particular interest in retaining Michoacán, its last standing holdout. As elsewhere, this pushed the PRD to ally with its lifelong enemy, the PRI, as well as with the PAN. The PRD-PRI-PAN’s candidate is Carlos Herrera Tello, former state interior secretary who is seen as Silvano Aureoles’ ‘heir’. Aureoles’ brother, senator Antonio García Conejo (PRD), withdrew his candidacy in December 2020 and rallied around Herrera. The PAN was originally reticent to ally with the PRD and PRI, and the PAN’s leader, Marko Cortés, who is from Michoacán and ran for mayor of Morelia in 2011 and 2012, was exploring a gubernatorial candidacy in his home state. However, very poor polling numbers forced him to change his plans and accept a coalition with the PRD and PRI.

Hipólito Mora, one of the famous founders of the autodefensas in Michoacán in 2013, is running for the PES. Mora was a lemon producer from La Ruana, a locality in the violent Tierra Caliente region. In March 2014, he was arrested for the murder of two vigilantes from a rival group but released two months later for lack of evidence. He applied to join a newly-formed, legal ‘rural self-defence group’ spearheaded by the government in 2014, but turned to electoral politics in 2015. He ran unsuccessfully for federal deputy in the 12th district for the MC in 2015 and quit the party in 2018 when they didn’t give him a candidacy.

The other original leader of the self-defences in Michoacán was José Manuel Mireles, who died from COVID-19 last November. His young widow (22) – they started going out when she was still a minor – Estephania Valdés – is running for state deputy with Morena, presenting herself as “Mireles’ widow”. She was insulted by Mireles’ eldest son during a campaign event.

The other candidates are Juan Antonio Magaña (PVEM), Abraham Sánchez Martínez (RSP) and former PAN mayor of Pátzcuaro Mercedes Calderón (MC). There have been rumours that RSP, the latest franchise party controlled by Elba Esther Gordillo, has considered withdrawing its candidate to help out Morena.

Morena remains the favourite to win, leading in nearly every poll. However, the race has tightened up after Morón’s disqualification. A poll by El Financiero in April showed a dead heat – Morena ahead of Herrera (PRD) by only one point, down from a five-point lead in March.

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Nayarit

The small state of Nayarit, sandwiched between Jalisco and Sinaloa, has been governed by non-PRI governors twice – between 1999 and 2005, and since 2017. Antonio Echevarría Domínguez was the state’s first non-priista governor, elected in 1999 with one of the earliest PAN-PRD coalitions. The PRI regained the state in 2005 and retained it in 2011. In 2017, Antonio Echevarría García (PAN) was elected, again with a PAN-PRD-PT alliance. He is the son of former governor Echevarría Domínguez and PAN senator Martha Elena García (who was the PAN’s 2011 gubernatorial candidate).

Under PRI governor Roberto Sandoval (2011-2017), Nayarit – one of Mexico’s main opium-growing regions and hub for the heroin trade – became a narco state. Sandoval built a carefully crafted cowboy image, undertook eye-catching white elephant projects (a huge arena which later flooded, water capture tanks never connected to the actual water supply, cowboy hat-shaped sports arena) and spent a fortune on catchy promotional videos – which are thankfully still available on YouTube, like Yo con el PRI, a 7-minute local remake of Marc Antony’s Vivir mi Vida.

More nefariously, Sandoval used his office to amass huge landholdings (he himself boasted that he went from 2 horses to 800 pure-bred horses and bought a ‘very expensive’ 17 ha ranch) and closely collaborated with drug traffickers. His attorney general, Edgar Veytia “El Diablo”, arrested in San Diego on drug trafficking charges in 2017, handed over control of the state to the cartels. It worked, because Nayarit had the lowest homicide rates (allegedly) at the time. Veytia consolidated an alliance with Juan Francisco Patrón Sánchez ‘H-2’, one of the leaders of the Beltrán Leyva cartel, and Los Zetas, before betraying H-2 in early 2017 and allying with the CJNG.

The state police helped the cartels locate and assassinate their rivals, to carry out some of their dirty work (murder, kidnapping), released them from jail quickly when they were detained, and protected them from enemies and federal operations. In 2013, for example, the Nayarit police spoiled a Navy operation to capture Héctor Beltrán Levya and H-2.

Veytia and Sandoval grew extremely rich from this partnership and other criminal activities. Veytia is accused of kidnapping (for ransom), imprisoning, extorting, and murdering those who went against him, as well as seizing large swathes of private and communal land (some of which was given to the governor). Veytia also began directly trafficking drugs himself: he operated heroin processing laboratories in the mountains and is said to have used his bus franchises to smuggle drugs. More explosively, General Salvador Cienfuegos – Secretary of National Defence (2012-2018) under Peña Nieto – was arrested in the US in October 2020, accused of having worked with the H-2 cartel. Cienfuegos’ arrest infuriated AMLO, and the US dropped charges and sent him back to Mexico in November 2020. In Mexico, Cienfuegos was cleared in January 2021, with AMLO claiming that the charges against him were politically motivated. 

Veytia pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment by a US federal court in September 2019. Reports of Sandoval’s criminality spread after he left office, and both federal and state prosecutors opened investigations into Sandoval in 2017, and his assets were frozen. In 2019, the US Treasury Department sanctioned Sandoval, his wife and two adult children under the Global Magnitsky sanctions. In February 2020, the US State Department publicly designated Sandoval due to “involvement in significant corruption”, a decision which banned him and his family from going to the United States. Facing arrest warrants, Sandoval is currently a fugitive.

Veytia’s arrest and accusations against Sandoval weakened the PRI, and it was badly defeated in 2017. Antonio Echevarría García (PAN-PRD-PT) was elected governor with 38.6% against 26.3% for the PRI, and 12.5% for crazy person Hilario Ramírez ‘Layín’ (mayor of San Blas famous for saying he “stole a little bit”, lifting women’s skirts, throwing money at crowds and only buttoning his shirt halfway). In 2018, AMLO won 65% of the vote in Nayarit.

The Morena-PT-PVEM-PANAL’s candidate is former senator Miguel Ángel Navarro Quintero, a veteran politician who has served as federal deputy (1997-2000, 2006-2008) and senator (2000-2006, 2018-2020). He was the PRD’s gubernatorial candidate in 2005, after quitting the PRI, and finished a close second with 42%. He was the PRD’s mayoral candidate in Tepic in 2008, losing to Sandoval, and Morena’s gubernatorial candidate in 2017, finishing fourth with 12.6%.

Navarro Quintero is accused of having received over 1 million pesos in bribes from Veytia during his 2017 gubernatorial campaign. Since 2018, several members of Morena had denounced Navarro Quintero’s ties to Veytia.

Federal deputy Geraldine Ponce, a former beauty queen, is Morena’s candidate in Tepic. Ponce is famous for a viral, supposedly ‘awkward moment’ with AMLO in an airport in 2019 – while she was talking to the president, his wife sat down next to him, as if to stop Ponce from continuing to talk with AMLO.

The opposition PAN-PRI-PRD’s candidate is former senator Gloria Núñez (PAN). Núñez, also a former priista until 2012, served as state deputy, federal deputy (2012-2015), mayor of Compostela (2017-2018) and senator (2018-2021).

Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Flores, mayor of La Yesca, is the MC’s candidate. There are five other minor candidates.

Navarro Quintero is the runaway favourite. He’s led by large margins in every single poll. A poll in April in El Financiero showed him leading by 8 points (40-32) against Núñez, with Flores in third with 14%; in their last poll in March, the 4T’s candidate was leading by 22 points. However, polls by other pollsters have shown Navarro Quintero retaining a much wider lead over Núñez and Flores.

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Nuevo León

With a population of 5.78 million and home to Mexico’s second-largest metropolitan area (the Monterrey metro with 5.34 million people), Nuevo León is the most populous state holding a gubernatorial election this year. Nuevo León/Monterrey is also the economic powerhouse of northern Mexico, with a famously strong entrepreneurial culture, and Nuevo León is the third largest economy in Mexico, contributing to 7.8% of the national GDP in 2019. With its strong economy, Nuevo León is one of the wealthiest states in Mexico – it had the lowest poverty rate in 2018 (14.5%).

As elsewhere in northern Mexico, the PAN enjoyed early success – often blunted by priista fraud – in Nuevo León in the 1980s and 1990s. The PAN was allowed to win Monterrey in 1994, and the PRI lost the governorship to the PAN in 1997. However, the PAN lost the state after just one term, in 2003. The PRI held the state between 2003 and 2015.

Nuevo León made headlines in 2015 with the victory of independent candidate Jaime Rodríguez Calderón ‘El Bronco’ in the governor’s race. El Bronco had been the priista mayor of García and quit the party in 2014 to run as an independent. With strong support in the Monterrey metropolitan area, El Bronco won by a landslide with 48.8% against 23.9% for the PRI and 22.3% for the PAN. He became the first (and to date only) independent state governor.

Unfortunately, El Bronco invested more time and energy into promoting his image, polishing his constructed persona (flamboyant cowboy) and his 2018 presidential aspirations. He promised little but seems to have achieved little and has not been very different from the partisan politicians he criticized. He also alienated a lot of people by abandoning his job for six months in 2018 to win 5.2% in the presidential election. His presidential campaign will mostly be remembered for proposing to literally chop people’s hands off, memes and clownish debate performances.

Nuevo León was one of AMLO’s weakest states – he won, but with only 34.3%, against 32.3% for Anaya, 16.5% for El Bronco and 14.5% for Meade. Morena-PT-PES won 6 of the state’s single-member federal districts, against 5 for the PAN and one for the PRI. In the senatorial race, the MC’s ticket won 24.2% against 23.5% for the PAN, 21.7% for Morena and 15.2% for the PRI.

A fairly conservative state, AMLO’s popularity in Nuevo León is unsurprisingly significantly below average and Morena continues to struggle in the state. Nevertheless, after confrontations between AMLO and El Bronco (a founding member of the Federalist Alliance), NL is a key target for the president and the presidential palace has taken, quite controversially, a direct interest in the matter.

The Morena-PT-PVEM-PANAL’s candidate is Clara Luz Flores, former PRI mayor of General Escobedo (2009-2012, 2015-2020), the fourth largest municipality of the Monterrey metro. Flores, a priista for 22 years, quit the PRI in February 2020 and moved closer to Morena as she began building her gubernatorial bid. She formally announced her gubernatorial candidacy with Morena in November 2020, with the president’s blessing (after seeing the polls showing her as the favourite) and was anointed as candidate a month later.

One of her weaknesses is her husband, Abel Guerra, former priista mayor of Escobedo (1991-1994, 1997-2000), federal deputy (2000-2002, 2012-2015) and secretary of public works under PRI governor José Natividad González (2003-2006). He has been the cacique of Escobedo for 3 decades (he was filmed saying “in Escobedo people vote for Clara because she’s my wife”) and is mixed up in murky business – notably influence peddling in big real estate developments. He is also close to El Bronco.

Morena considered several potential candidates, most notably then-federal deputy Tatiana Clouthier – the daughter of famous 1988 panista presidential candidate Manuel Clouthier who had been coordinator of AMLO’s 2018 campaign. However, Clouthier was poorly received by the business sector, and her candidacy was dropped in favour of Flores, who is more acceptable to the business elites.

In their bid to win, Morena has welcomed both priistas and panistas. Flores has been endorsed by PRI politicians like federal deputy Pedro Pablo Treviño, Héctor Gutiérrez (former federal deputy) and Felipe Enríquez (former federal deputy and ambassador to Uruguay). Several of the coalition’s mayoral candidates in the Monterrey metro area are former priistas.

PAN senator Víctor Fuentes, after losing the PAN nomination, quit the PAN – claiming it was colluding with El Bronco (Mauricio González, former caretaker governor in 2018 and secretary general of government under El Bronco is now a PAN candidate for federal deputy) – and became the mayoral candidate in Monterrey, despite being very critical of AMLO in the past. However, Fuentes never took off in the polls and his strategy to capture votes from the PRI didn’t work. He dropped out of the election in May and made his way back to the PAN. Felipe de Jesús Cantú, former PAN mayor of Monterrey (2000-2003), also quit the PAN after nearly 40 years and recently replaced Fuentes as the mayoral candidate in Monterrey. Three years ago, Cantú had been the PAN’s mayoral candidate in Monterrey.

Flores has attempted to appear as a moderate during the campaign, often seeking to reassure the private sector by saying that the government should not interfere so that they can invest and reactivate the economy.

The PRI-PRD’s candidate is the former mayor of Monterrey Adrián de la Garza (2015-2018, 2019-2020). Like his father before him in the 1970s, de la Garza served as state attorney general (2011-2015) under PRI governor Rodrigo Medina, who is currently accused of tax evasion and money laundering. As attorney general, the police was accused of torture and forced disappearance, and in 2016 a Spanish police report linked de la Garza, among other politicians, to Los Zetas, through contacts with ‘El Mono’ Muñoz. Despite these controversies, the law-and-order discourse and promises of ‘putting Nuevo León in order’ are at the core of his campaign.

De la Garza was elected mayor of Monterrey in 2015 and sought reelection in 2018. He narrowly lost, by just under 1%, the initial 2018 election, but the results were controversially reversed by the state electoral court (amidst accusations of conflict of interest involving some of the judges) before the TEPJF annulled the election and ordered a rerun. De la Garza won the rerun second election in December 2018 by 1.9%. As mayor, de la Garza has improved the city’s credit rating and reduced the debt, but also faced accusations of irregularities in urban development, corruption and lack of transparency. During the campaign, de la Garza has tried to distance himself from Medina and has gained the support of other PRI factions opposed to Medina, like Ildefonso Guajardo (Secretary of Economy under EPN and Mexican negotiator for the USMCA) and other former PRI governors.

Adrián de la Garza and the PRI’s mayoral candidate in Monterrey, Francisco Cienfuegos – state deputy (2012-2015, 2018-), former mayor of Guadalupe (2015-2018) – are both considered close allies of former governor Rodrigo Medina, accused of corruption and irregularities during his term. Medina was also investigated, and briefly detained for one day, for illicit enrichment and embezzlement in 2017 by El Bronco’s administration.

The MC’s candidate is young (33) senator Samuel García. A former state legislator (2015-2018), he was elected to the Senate in 2018 with the MC ticket winning the most votes in the state.

García is the pure living embodiment of the spoiled rich white kid, and he has turned into a meme because of his behaviour. He has a history of tone-deaf statements including whining that when he was 15 his dad used to wake him up at 5am on Saturdays to play golf or considering 40,000-50,000 pesos to be a sueldito (small salary; most Mexicans earn less than 7,500 pesos a month). In 2015, García controversially said that in Mexico, the north works, the centre administrates and the south rests.

García married Instagram influencer Mariana Rodríguez in May 2020, at a wedding which did not follow public health restrictions. During an Instagram Live in 2020, García was accused of being misogynistic when he scolded his wife for ‘showing too much leg’. Mariana Rodríguez has been one of García’s main surrogates, in a campaign which has relied on social media and spontaneous campaigning on the streets – rather than mass events.

The MC had a rather nasty and divisive battle between García and state deputy Luis Donaldo Colosio Riojas (the son of Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, the assassinated 1994 PRI presidential candidate). García wanted an internal primary because he controls the MC structure in NL, while Colosio wanted an open poll, where he would do better.

The MC initially considered an alliance with the PAN. García and the MC’s leader/owner, Dante Delgado, opposed an alliance with the PAN, considering that it would be a net drag on the party. Colosio, as well as Jalisco governor Enrique Alfaro, wanted a PAN-MC coalition in NL, an idea supported by some panistas like the PAN mayor of San Nicolás de los Garza Zeferino Salgado. An alliance with the PAN was ruled out in November 2020, and Colosio dropped his gubernatorial bid to run for mayor of Monterrey instead. Colosio threatened to quit MC and run with Morena or one of the smaller parties (RSP or FxM). In January 2021, Colosio confirmed his candidacy in Monterrey with the MC, in exchange for control over the party’s candidacies for the state congress and control over the state party.

Samuel García portrays himself as ‘incorruptible’ and the only and campaigns on a slogan of throwing out the ‘old politics’ (the PRI and PAN) from NL. One of his most notable and ambitious promises is a new ‘fiscal pact’ – the system of federal fiscal/tax coordination, designed in 1978, recently criticized by the opposition governors of the rich states (NL, Jalisco, Tamaulipas, Coahuila). García claims that Nuevo León is paying far more in taxes than it gets back (the federal government keeps 90% of the state’s tax revenues), and with a strongly anti-centre (federal government) regionalist rhetoric, says that NL’s money needs to stay in NL. The issue is far more complex than García makes it out to be, and he is short on details of his preferred alternative. His rivals have opposed leaving the ‘fiscal pact’, with Flores warning that García’s plan would lead to the creation of a local consumption tax.

The PAN’s candidate is the former mayor of Monterrey (2009-2012) Fernando Larrazábal. Larrazábal also served as mayor of San Nicolás (2000-2003), state deputy (2006-2009) and federal deputy (2012-2015). He had largely been absent from politics for the past five years, but made a comeback with the backing of Zeferino Salgado, the mayor of San Nicolás, and the backing of PAN leader Marko Cortés. Larrazábal’s administration in Monterrey is associated with scandals, most notably the 2011 Casino Royale attack by Los Zetas which killed 52 people. Investigations revealed that the attack may have been linked to the casino’s refusal to pay extortion money to organized crime. A video showed Larrzábal’s brother receiving bundles of cash at a casino shortly before the attacks (he claimed it was because he sold them ‘liquor and cheese’). Larrzábal’s brother was detained for 108 days before being released. Larrazábal now calls his brother’s trial perverse and politically motivated.

The PAN considered alliances with the MC (see above), the PRI and PRD. In November 2020, the PAN’s state leaders rejected an alliance with the PRI, their long-time rival. The PAN approved an alliance with the PRD, but the PRD decided to go with the PRI instead. Larrazábal won the PAN’s internal primary in January 2021 with 71.8% against 22.4% for senator Víctor Fuentes.

With his controversial past and absence from politics for five years, Larrazábal is a weak candidate. There have been rumours that the plan is (was?) for him to drop out after a certain point and make a deal with Adrián de la Garza. Larrazábal is said to have worked for de la Garza in 2018, and Salgado is close to de la Garza and Cienfuegos. Saddled by Larrazábal, PAN mayoral candidates have tried to distance themselves from their gubernatorial candidate. However, despite these rumours, Larrazábal has sustained his campaign – though with little momentum, but still in low double-digits. He is confident that he can even finish second if turnout is low. Nevertheless, on Twitter, Felipe Calderón has pushed for him to drop out in favour of de la Garza.

The high-stakes election has been quite nasty on all sides. There had been speculation, from photographs, that Flores had participated in the sex cult/multilevel marketing organization NXIVM. Flores accepted that she had taken a personal development class but denied knowing about NXIVM or its leader, Keith Raniere, sentenced to 120 years in prison in 2020. In late March, de la Garza released a one-hour video of a discussion between Raniere and Flores in which she asks for his advice on governing. Flores was badly hurt by the NXIVM revelations, seeing her lead in the polls evaporate quickly. She later apologized and admitted that it was a mistake to repeatedly deny knowing Raniere. This scandal, which likely hurt her the most among middle-class urban voters, forced her to refocus her campaign around AMLO and bank on the president’s 40-45% approval in NL as her path to a narrow victory.

Later, in April, de la Garza turned his attacks to Samuel García, who had begun improving in the polls after Flores fell. He accused García of lying about his family’s ties to Gilberto García Mena, a convicted drug lord and former high-ranking member of the Gulf Cartel and revealed a 1996 video of a family party where 10-year-old Samuel García is seen with his parents taking a picture with Gilberto García Mena. García retorted that de la Garza was desperate and that it is not a crime to dance. De la Garza also denounced García and his family to the Attorney General’s office (FGR) for the irregular purchase of a luxury apartment at less than a third of its value. Unlike with the Raniere video, however, García did not suffer much damage from this scandal.

Over a week ago, the FGR announced that it was investigating García and de la Garza for alleged electoral offences. García is under investigation by the finance secretariat’s financial investigation unit for the financing of his campaign by his relatives (his wife, his father and father-in-law). Authorities are also looking at his father-in-law’s involvement in a fraudulent network of frontmen and shell companies and accusations that his wife’s promotion of his campaign on her Instagram is not being declared in his campaign expenses. Adrián de la Garza is being investigated for the promotion of a ‘pink card’ for women, a possible form of conditioning votes or vote buying (promising a card with 1,500 pesos bimonthly for women if he wins). Both candidates have denied the accusations against them.

Given the timing of these investigations, it is widely suspected that they are in some way orchestrated by AMLO to favour the flailing campaign of his candidate, Clara Luz Flores. There are also strong rumours that AMLO is trying to lay the groundwork to have the election annulled in courts afterwards, as has happened in other states in the past. The two candidates themselves, the opposition and critical journalists attacked AMLO for interfering in the electoral process. AMLO openly said that he had something to do with the FGR’s investigation and that he was the one who had denounced the candidates.

In Monterrey, Colosio has claimed that Cienfuegos (PRI) had spied on him and his family and used the municipal police to intimidate his family. On the other hand, the company in which Colosio is a partner obtained ‘legal advice’ contracts worth over 7 million pesos with the corrupt administrations of former PRI governors Borge (Q. Roo), Sandoval (Nay.), Medina (NL) and Duarte (Ver.).

Clara Luz Flores began the campaign in January 2021 as the favourite. García seemed weakened by his self-inflicted controversies, and de la Garza was Flores’ main rival. She retained her lead until March, but Flores’ support collapsed – falling into third place in nearly all polls – following the Raniere/NXIVM scandal (or, according to other arguments, her identification with the unpopular Morena/4T brand in NL). García, who had been counted out until then, surged. The race is now between García and de la Garza.

Demoscopia on May 17 had de la Garza leading with 28% against 22% for García, with Larrazábal climbing into third with 20%. El Financiero in April had García taking a two-point lead over de la Garza (29-27) with Flores and Larrzábal tied for third (20, 21). The latest poll by El Norte had García leading. Massive Caller has consistently had García leading comfortably.

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Querétaro

Querétaro, located in central Mexico, is one of the most economically dynamic states in the country – with a thriving manufacturing sector, including Mexico’s main aerospace industry cluster. Since the election of the first non-priista (PAN) governor in 1997, the state has been ruled by the PAN for three terms (1997-2003, 2003-2009, 2015-2021) and the PRI for only one term (2009-2015).

In 2015, the PAN’s Francisco ‘Pancho’ Domínguez Servién, senator (2012-2015) and former mayor of Querétaro (2009-2011), was elected governor. Domínguez has been mixed up in a series of scandals. In 2019, Domínguez was among the senior politicians implicated in the Caja Libertad scandal, a savings and credit agency formerly owned by Juan Collado, who was arrested for a suspected fraudulent real estate transaction. Collado is a politically connected lawyer whose clients include Enrique Peña Nieto, Raúl Salinas and Carlos Romero Deschamps; the plaintiff claimed that the resources from the fraudulent transaction paid for Domínguez’s electoral campaign and that the real owners of Caja Libertad were EPN, Carlos Salinas, Pancho Domínguez and PAN senator Mauricio Kuri. Domínguez and Kuri were later exonerated of all responsibility in the Caja Libertad scandal.

Already back during the 2015 campaign, in a leaked audio between then-panista gubernatorial candidates Domínguez and Mendoza Davis (BCS), Domínguez mentioned receiving monthly contributions of 6 million pesos until the election from a man named ‘Kors’. It has recently been revealed that ‘Kors’ likely referred to Peña Nieto’s then interior secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong.

In 2020, not only was Pancho Domínguez among the politicians named by Emilio Lozoya as having received bribes in exchange for voting in favour of EPN’s energy reform but also as one of those who ‘extorted’ the most, asking for up to 50 million dollars per vote. Lozoya even described the incumbent governor as “drunk and aggressive”, “screaming” to demand more bribes. Lozoya also claimed that Ricardo Anaya – a queretano, staunch rival of Domínguez and the PAN’s 2018 presidential candidate – received 6.8 million pesos to support his gubernatorial aspirations in Querétaro in 2014, on orders of then-finance secretary Luis Videgaray.

In August 2020, a video – supposedly released by Lozoya as part of his plea deal – showed a Pemex official giving bundles of cash to a former secretary of the Senate and Domínguez’s private secretary. The money being received was, according to Lozoya, for the then-panista senators including Pancho Domínguez. The governor denied having anything to do with the accusations and that he had nothing to hide, considering the ‘videoscandal’ to be a political hitjob.

Querétaro is a conservative state where the PAN is strong. It is also the home state of the PAN-PRD-MC’s 2018 presidential candidate, Ricardo Anaya. In 2018, however, Anaya lost the state by about 7.5 points to AMLO – 33.9% against 41.4% for the president. Nevertheless, the PAN won the most votes in the Senate election, with 38.8%.

The PAN’s candidate is senator Mauricio Kuri. Kuri, a former businessman, was previously mayor of Corregidora (2015-2018) and was elected to the Senate in 2018. From 2019 until his resignation in 2021, Kuri was the coordinator of the PAN caucus in the Senate, making him a prominent figure of the opposition nationally. Unlike Domínguez, Kuri is a close ally of Ricardo Anaya and has had a tense relationship with Domínguez. Last year, there were rumours that the governor’s entourage suspected that it was Kuri who negotiated the publication of the scandalous video with the presidential palace.

Kuri has his own controversies. Kuri has strong ties to Francisco Javier Rodríguez Borgio, ‘the czar of casinos’, a controversial businessman accused of fraudulent real estate deals, gasoline theft, money laundering and investigated in Spain for death threats and plotting to assassinate two Spanish businessmen. Rodríguez Borgio would have given 30 million pesos to Kuri and Domínguez’s electoral campaigns in 2014-5 in exchange for personal favours and business deals. The PAN mayor of Colón who spoke out about Kuri’s close ties to the ‘czar of casinos’ was conveniently arrested and put away in prison.

Morena’s candidate is retired judge Celia Maya, who had previously run for the PRD in 2003 (6.6%) and Morena in 2015 (5.6%). She also unsuccessfully run for the Senate in 2012 and 2018. Maya served as a magistrate on the Superior Court of Justice of Querétaro between 1985 and 2019. She is close to AMLO and she was twice among those nominated by the president for vacancies on the Supreme Court, in 2018 and 2019; however, she was not elected by the Senate on either occasion. In 2019, when she was a nominee for the Supreme Court, she caused controversy with her comments about same-sex adoption, questioning whether same-sex parents would be good for a child’s upbringing. She retired from the court in the fall of 2019 and receives a monthly lifelong pension of 157,000 pesos ($7,800), after successfully challenging a state law capping public officials’ pensions – a major contradiction with AMLO and Morena’s austerity discourse.

Morena’s mayoral candidate in Querétaro, the state capital, is Arturo Maximiliano García Pérez, a former panista who had served as coordinator for Kuri’s mayoral and senatorial campaigns in 2015 and 2018, respectively. He is up against incumbent PAN mayor Luis Bernardo Nava, who is seeking reelection.

The PRI’s candidate is Abigail Arredondo, a state deputy. The other candidates are Raquel Ruiz de Santiago Álvarez (PRD), Penélope Ramírez (PT), Katia Reséndiz (PVEM), Bety León (MC), Miguel Nava (RSP), Juan Carlos Martínez (FxM) and María de Jesús Ibarra Pérez (PES). There are rumours that Felipe Calderón is quietly backing the PES’ candidate, who is close to calderonista PAN deputy and former mayor of Querétaro Marcos Aguilar.

Kuri will almost certainly win by an extremely comfortable margin on June 6 – he has led in every single poll, often by nearly 20 points.

San Luis Potosí

San Luis Potosí (SLP) is a state of 2.8 million people in central Mexico which has become one of the main centres of the Mexican automotive industry.

Although it has been ruled by the PRI with the exception of one PAN governor (2003-2009), SLP saw one of the first opposition movements to PRI rule, led by Salvador Nava Martínez. In 1958, Nava won the city hall of San Luis Potosí as an independent, defeating the PRI candidate, and three years later ran for governor as an independent – unsurprisingly losing a rigged election. Nava led protests which were brutally repressed by the army and he was twice arrested. Nava returned to politics a second time, elected mayor of San Luis Potosí once again as an opposition candidate in 1982 and leading an opposition coalition in the 1991 gubernatorial election. The 1991 election was won by the PRI, amidst allegations of frauds, and Nava led a protest march to Mexico City which pushed Carlos Salinas to pressure the priista governor-elect to resign.

In the last election, in 2015, the PRI’s Juan Manuel Carreras narrowly won, with 35.7% against 33% for the PAN’s candidate. In 2018, AMLO won the state with 41.9% against 26.6% for Anaya and 20.7% for Meade. Morena remains rather weak in the state – in 2018, although it became the largest force in the state congress (tied with the PAN), the traditional parties (PRI, PAN, PRD) retained most municipalities.

The PAN-PRI-PRD-PCP’s candidate is Octavio Pedroza (PAN), former senator (2012-2018), federal deputy (2009-2012) and mayor of SLP (2003-2006). The state leadership of the PRI, divided between different factions, was unable to settle on a candidate and handed over its power to the national leadership. There were also tensions within the PAN, with several members and leaders leaving the party in protest. Among them was the mayor of San Luis Potosí, Xavier Nava Martínez, grandson of Salvador Nava and former PRD federal deputy (2015-2018). Nava unsuccessfully sought the PAN’s gubernatorial nomination and then challenged the results which favoured Pedroza. Nava also quit the PAN and looked to other parties, before finally seeking re-election in SLP as Morena’s candidate.

Governor Carreras’ faction seems to have been weakened and marginalized in the process, although he was able to impose Enrique Galindo as the coalition’s mayoral candidate in the state capital. Galindo was general commissioner of the Federal Police (2013-2016), under whose tenure El Chapo was captured twice but faced several scandals – arbitrary execution, violent repression of protests and excessive use of forces against protesters. He was dismissed in 2016 by Peña Nieto following arbitrary execution scandals.

Pedroza is the brother of the state’s finance secretary. An independent candidate has claimed that public funds are being used to support Pedroza’s candidacy.

Morena and its allies – the PVEM and PT – are divided in SLP. The candidate of the PVEM-PT is federal deputy Ricardo ‘el Pollo’ Gallardo (PVEM), former mayor of Soledad de Graciano Sánchez (2012-2014). Gallardo is the son of Ricardo Gallardo Juárez, former mayor of San Luis Potosí (2015-2018) and his predecessor as mayor of Soledad de Graciano Sánchez (2009-2012). Gallardo is a former member of the PRD, and coordinator of the PRD caucus in the lower house, who spearheaded the defection of a group of nine PRD federal deputies in February 2019 and later joined the PVEM.

Gallardo is a controversial politician, particularly distrusted by the state’s business and political elites but with support among poorer voters. While his municipal administration was well regarded because of the implementation of social programs, he and his father have faced allegations of corruption. In early 2015, as he was a gubernatorial pre-candidate for the PRD, he was arrested and later incarcerated for 11 months, accused of embezzling 200 million pesos in public funds to companies of which he was shareholder. He was released in late 2015 after a judge ruled that prosecutors had been unable to prove the crimes of which he was accused. More recent reports claim that Gallardo and his father embezzled over 700 million pesos during their administrations in SLP and Soledad de Graciano Sánchez.

Gallardo campaigns using traditional clientelist tactics. He’s been accused by his opponents of promoting a card with monetary benefits attached – like de la Garza in NL – which would be conditioned to people providing proof that they voted PVEM.

The PVEM-PT’s mayoral candidate in SLP is Leonel Serrato, a recent disgruntled Morena defector who unsuccessfully sought Morena’s gubernatorial nomination.

Nationally, the PVEM and especially the PT had repeatedly insisted that their loyalty be rewarded with a governorship, with one of the potential states (for the Greens) being SLP with Gallardo, who is strongly backed by the current strongman of the Greens, senator (and former governor of Chiapas) Manuel Velasco. However, local Morena members in SLP rejected an alliance with the PVEM in the state because of Gallardo’s bad reputation. Later, Morena’s pre-candidates rebelled against the national leadership when it announced that the party’s candidate in SLP would be a woman, to conform with new gender parity rules.

Morena’s candidate is Mónica Rangel, a former priista and health secretary (2015-2012) in Juan Manuel Carreras’ cabinet. Her candidacy was announced by Morena in February 2021, following rumours that the PRI governor – sidelined within his own party – had proposed an alliance to Morena. Local NGOs have denounced irregularities – the use of false invoices and shell companies to embezzle funds – in state contracts during the pandemic.

Morena’s mayoral candidate in San Luis Potosí is the incumbent (ex-PAN) mayor Xavier Nava, who until just a few months ago was a staunch opponent of the government. His candidacy was cancelled by the state electoral court, but the ruling was overturned, and his candidacy restored by the regional chamber of the TEPJF.

The PES’ candidate is Adrián Esper Cárdenas, a businessman and former independent mayor of Ciudad Valles (2018-2021). Esper was among Morena’s gubernatorial pre-candidates, but after the national leadership imposed a woman candidate, he criticized Morena’s opaque and undemocratic selection process and got the PES’ support to continue his candidacy. Esper is a colourful figure who enjoys dressing up as a cowboy, defines himself as an environmental activist and is a big fan of Elon Musk and Tesla. As mayor, he ordered 15 Tesla cybertrucks for the local police force. Despite running for the conservative PES, he says that he is left-wing. His ideas are rather eclectic and ambitious – dollarization, open borders with the US and Canada, more electric cars and hydropanels. His candidacy is said to be backed by businessmen tied to Carlos Slim’s Grupo Carso.

The other candidates are Marvely Costanzo (MC), Francisco Javier Rico Ávalos (PANAL), Juan Carlos Machinena (FxM), Arturo Segoviano (independent) and José Luis Romero Calzada ‘El Tecmol’ (RSP). The latter, an ex-priista state deputy, is a colourful (and controversial) meme – the kind of candidate profile the new party has gone for. He’s posed shirtless in Alaska, hit someone at an event, insulted journalists, danced with a donkey, danced on the floor of the state congress, challenged Esper to a contest to see who is strongest and has been accused of gasoline theft.

Polling in this race has been confusing. Pedroza has a very comfortable lead in Massive Caller polls, but a recent poll in Reforma had Pedroza and Gallardo tied at 38% each (Rangel only had 13%), while El Financiero’s poll in April showed Gallardo leading by two (36% to 34%), surging by 17% from their poll in March. El País’ poll average has Pedroza ahead with 38% against 26% for Gallardo and 22% for Rangel.

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Sinaloa

Sinaloa, a state often famous for all the wrong reasons, is a traditional PRI stronghold – although the PAN was strong historically. The PRI has governed the state for all but one term (2011-2016). The only non-priista governor in the state’s modern history thus far was Mario López Valdez ‘Malova’, a PRI senator (2006-2010) and local businessman – owner of a chain of hardware stores. He left the PRI just months before the election and was elected in 2010 with the backing of an opposition coalition (PAN-PRD-MC). Malova left a paltry record – widespread violence, corruption and accusations that he was protecting the Sinaloa Cartel. In 2016, Quirino Ordaz Coppel – a PRI politician and businessman close to President Peña Nieto – was elected governor by a comfortable margin and 41.7% of the vote. Today, Quirino Ordaz is on very good terms with AMLO and there are even rumours that the president would like him to take control of the PRI after the elections…

In 2018, however, AMLO won Sinaloa in a landslide with no less than 64.4% of the vote against a mere 18% for Meade. Morena swept the congressional elections, won a majority in the state congress, and took all of the state’s five largest municipalities – Culiacán, Mazatlán, Ahome, Guasave and Navolato.

Morena’s candidate is former senator (2018-2021) Rubén Rocha Moya. Rocha, the former rector of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa (1993-1997), already ran for governor twice before, in 1986 (for a leftist coalition, 1.7%) and 1998 (for the PRD, 19%). He was elected to the Senate in 2018. Although he is an old left-wing activist – a member of the Unified Socialist Party of Mexico (PSUM) in the 1980s and later the PRD – he has also worked for PRI state and federal administrations. He was coordinator of advisors for PRI governor Jesús Aguilar Padilla (2005-2010), deputy director of training and technical services of the ISSSTE (public sector social security agency) between 2013 and 2017, and again coordinator of advisors for incumbent PRI governor Quirino Ordaz in 2017.

Rocha is supported by the local Partido Sinaloense (PAS) and its owner, Héctor Cuén. Cuén is the former rector of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa (2005-2009) and he and his party still maintain control over the university. He is an opportunistic politician who has been mayor of Culiacán for the PRI (2011-2012), senatorial candidate for the PANAL (2012), state deputy for the PAS (2013-2016), gubernatorial candidate for the PAS-MC in 2016 (finishing second with 26%) and senatorial candidate in 2018. Three years ago, the PAS was allied to the PAN-PRD-MC, but now it’s allied with Morena and Cuén is already saying that he will ‘co-govern’ the state with Rocha.

The alliance with the PAS and the candidate selection process in Morena displeased certain factions of the party which still refuse to support Rocha, although most original critics (unsuccessful pre-candidates) were placated with candidacies.

Journalist Anabel Hernández, one of the top specialists on drug trafficking in Mexico, claimed in an interview that Rocha had gotten the ‘go-ahead’ to govern the state from Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada García, one of the most wanted drug lords and last remaining member of the Sinaloa Cartel’s old guard.

The PRI-PAN-PRD’s candidate is former senator (2018-2021) Mario Zamora. Zamora, elected to the Senate in 2018, was a state deputy over 10 years ago (2007-2010) and later worked in the federal government during EPN’s administration. He had the backing of governor Ordaz and was preferred to Jesús Valdés, former mayor of Culiacán (2017-2018) and state leader of the PRI.

Zamora has the support of much of the state’s business community, most notably Enrique Coppel Lukken (board member of the Grupo Coppel, a large chain of department stores).

Morena has criticized the governor for allegedly interfering in the election. The FGR is investigating the use of rechargeable cards – with up to 350 pesos monthly to buy groceries – distributed by the state government since last year.

The MC’s candidate is Sergio Torres Félix, former state fisheries secretary (2018-2012), PRI mayor of Culiacán (2014-2016) and federal deputy (2012-2013). Torres left the PRI last year after some 20 years.

The other candidates are Ricardo Arnulfo Mendoza (PES), Gloria González (PT), Yolanda Cabrera (RSP) and Rosa Elena Millán (FxM). The PVEM’s candidate withdrew to support Rocha González and Millán are former priistas (Millán is a three-time state deputy and former federal deputy), and FxM in Sinaloa is led by the son of former PRI governor Juan Millán.

Here, the trend is clear: Rocha is the prohibitive favourite and leads by around 10 points. A poll in Reforma in mid-May had him leading Zamora by 10%. A poll a bit before that in El Universal only had Rocha ahead by 4% but it seems to be an outlier from other polls.

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Sonora

The second largest state in Mexico by land area, Sonora – like Sinaloa – has been governed by the PRI for all but one term, despite the PAN’s historic strength in this part of northern Mexico.

The term of the state’s only non-priista governor to date, the PAN’s Guillermo Padrés (2009-2015) – a descendant of Plutarco Elías Calles, ended in disgrace. Padrés faced a series of scandals and controversies during his term – including a 53% increase in public debt, widespread protests in 2013 over a new tax on vehicle ownership, the illegal construction of a dam on his 3,670 ha. ranch and the extrajudicial kidnapping by his wife of a former housekeeper accused of stealing cash and jewellery (the housekeeper was later tortured by state police until she confessed and imprisoned without evidence for over 4 years). Padrés is also accused of tax fraud, tax evasion, embezzlement, money laundering and other financial irregularities for millions of dollars. After being a fugitive for over a year, Padrés turned himself in in 2016 and was incarcerated. He was released on bail in 2019 as his case drags on.

Claudia Pavlovich (PRI), supported by old priista apparatchik and former governor Manlio Fabio Beltrones (himself mixed up in a long list of corruption affairs, including lots of rumoured narco ties), was elected in 2015.

AMLO swept Sonora in 2018, winning 59.7% of the vote against just 16.6% for Meade. Morena and its allies also won the senatorial contest, all seven federal electoral districts and obtained an absolute majority in the state congress. While the PRI retained control over more municipalities, Morena won the top eight most populated municipalities – the state capital of Hermosillo as well as Cajeme, Nogales, San Luis Río Colorado, Navojoa, Guaymas, Agua Prieta and Caborca. Facing a new hostile majority, the outgoing state congress in the summer of 2018 approved a controversial ‘veto law’ which gave the governor veto powers and increased executive powers at the expense of the state legislature. The SCJN ruled these amendments to be constitutional in March 2021.

Morena-PT-PVEM-PANAL’s candidate is the former federal Secretary of Security (2018-2020), Alfonso Durazo. Durazo’s gubernatorial ambitions were a poorly kept secret for quite a while, and he made them public October 2020. Since the 1990s, Durazo has been a member of four parties – the PRI, PAN, PRD and now Morena. He was Luis Donaldo Colosio’s private secretary until Colosio’s assassination in 1994, and later moved to support Vicente Fox and the PAN in 2000 and served as President Fox’s private secretary and presidential spokesperson. In 2004, he publicly broke with Fox and heavily criticized his administration. Since 2006, Durazo has been a close ally of AMLO. He was elected federal deputy in 2012 and senator in 2018, although he only served two months in the Senate before joining AMLO’s cabinet.

Durazo’s weakness is his mediocre record as secretary security and the federal government’s haphazard and contradictory security strategy. Continuing a trend which began under EPN, the homicide rate reached an all-time high of 27.4 in 2019 and was only barely lower (27) in 2020, with over 30,000 murders a year. Several cases have highlighted the administration’s shambolic security strategy. In October 2019, a brutal firefight erupted in Culiacán (Sinaloa) as the Sinaloa Cartel outmanned and outgunned security forces after they briefly arrested one of El Chapo’s son, Ovidio Guzmán. The culiacanazo forced Durazo to release Ovidio Guzmán to avoid an even bigger explosion of violence in the city, a humiliating defeat for the state at the hands of one of the main cartels.

In November 2019, nine members – three women and six children – of the Mormon LeBarón family (which held dual US-Mexican citizenship) were murdered by a small but bloody gang in northwestern Sonora. The LeBarón massacre continues to cause headaches for Durazo. In March 2021, a member of the family announced that he would sue Durazo for omission (failure to act), claiming that Durazo was informed of criminal groups’ presence in the area prior to the massacre. Durazo claims that he and his team “made the best effort” in the case.

In Bavispe, the Durazo family’s hometown, Durazo’s sister Celia Durazo is Morena’s mayoral candidate and faces Adam Langford (PRI-PAN-PRD), brother of Christina Marie Langford, one of the victims of the November 2019 massacre in Bavispe, and himself former mayor (2003-2006, 2009-2012)

Despite this weakness, Durazo is campaigning on security and judicial reforms, blaming the increase in violence in Sonora on the PRI state government.

The PRI-PAN-PRD’s candidate is former senator (2012-2018) Ernesto ‘El Borrego’ Gándara (ex-PRI). Gándara, who comes from a prominent elite family in Hermosillo, is a career politician who worked for several presidents and also served as mayor of the state capital between 2006 and 2008. He is the first cousin of Javier Gándara, his successor as mayor of Hermosillo (for the PAN) and PAN gubernatorial candidate in 2015. He left the PRI in 2020, but only to appear as an ‘independent’ civic candidate – backed by the PRI, PAN and PRD – for the governorship.

He has complained in private that he thinks that Pavlovich is working against him behind the scenes to favour Durazo, given Pavlovich and Beltrones’ tensions with PRI leader Alito Moreno. On the other hand, Durazo said that he distrusted the state government and accused priistas in government of interfering in the election.

The MC’s candidate is now the little-known Miguel Scott, who was named by the party in May after the original candidate – Ricardo Bours, the brother of former PRI governor Eduardo Bours (2003-2009) – dropped out and endorsed Gándara. The Bours are a billionaire business (and political) family – owners of the meat and egg producing company Bachoco and telecommunications company Megacable. From his time as governor, Eduardo Bours is still facing controversies and now a renewed judicial investigation into his responsibility in the ABC daycare fire in 2009 which killed 49 children. Although prosecutors had closed the case against him in 2013, in 2019 the social security institute (IMSS) filed a new complaint against Bours with the FGR. Ricardo Bours left the PRI in 2019 after 41 years.

Bours dropped out after the assassination of Abel Murrieta, the MC’s mayoral candidate in Cajeme, in May 2021. Murrieta was the LeBarón’s family lawyer, former state attorney general (2004-2012), state deputy and federal deputy (2015-2018). From his time as attorney general under Bours and Padrés, the parents of the victims of the ABC daycare fire accused him of negligence.

The other candidates are the former PAN mayor of Nogales Cuauhtémoc Galindo (RSP), the former PRI mayor of Guaymas Carlos Zatarain (PES) and Rosario Robles Robles (FxM).

Durazo has had the advantage in nearly every single poll but the race is still expected to be tight. A recent poll by Reforma had him leading Gándara by 6 (51-45) and the last poll in El Financiero back in April had him leading by 9 (46-37).


Tlaxcala

Tlaxcala is the smallest state in Mexico by land area after CDMX and is largely surrounded by the larger state of Puebla, to which it is quite closely linked. Currently ruled by the PRI for the last twelve years, the state has seen PRI, PRD and PAN governors and gubernatorial elections have been close since the late 1990s.

In 1998, Alfonso Sánchez Anaya, a former priista federal deputy, was elected governor with the support of the PRD – whose leader at the time was none other than AMLO. He has since remained a close ally of the president. In 2004, he controversially tried to be succeeded by his wife, María del Carmen Ramírez, but she finished third in a close three-way election which was won by another priista defector, standing for the PAN, Héctor Ortiz Ortiz (former mayor of Tlaxcala). The PRI regained the state in a close election in 2010 with Mariano González Zarur, the runner-up six years before.

In 2016, Marco Antonio Mena (PRI) was elected in another close race. In 2018, Tlaxcala was AMLO’s second-best state, winning 70.6% of the vote.

The Morena-PT-PVEM-PES Tlaxcala-PANAL coalition’s candidate is former senator and superdelegate Lorena Cuéllar. Cuéllar is another former priista who served as a PRI state deputy (2005-2007, 2011-2012) and mayor of Tlaxcala (2008-2010) before quitting the PRI in 2012 after a dispute over the party’s senatorial candidates with the governor and her uncle, Joaquín Cisneros Fernández. She accepted AMLO’s invitation to run for the Senate as the first candidate of the PRD-PT-MC coalition and won. Cuéllar, as the PRD-PT’s candidate, was the runner-up in the 2016 election, losing to Mena by less than 2.4% and 13,700 votes.

She left the PRD in 2017 and was elected federal deputy for Morena in 2018. She served only three months before she was appointed as the federal government’s superdelegate in Tlaxcala. As with other superdelegates, she was accused of taking advantage of her office and the government’s social programs to promote her image and favour her gubernatorial candidacy.

Both of her grandfathers served as governors (for the PRI obviously) – Joaquín Cisneros Molina (1957-1963) and Crisanto Cuéllar Abaroa (1970). As aforementioned, she is also the niece of former PRI senator Joaquín Cisneros Fernández.

Cuéllar was controversially preferred over other pre-candidates like Dulce María Silva, a businesswoman and wife of César Yáñez (a long-time AMLO ally and senior member of the presidential office), who denounced a ‘negotiation’ to impose Cuéllar and admitted her disappointment with AMLO in a leaked recording. Silva married Yáñez in an excessively ostentatious and frivolous fancy wedding in September 2018, with AMLO as one of the witnesses. The wedding sparked controversy for its apparent disconnect with AMLO’s rhetoric of austerity and his own past criticisms of politicians’ lavish lifestyles. Dulce María Silva was compensated with a ‘pluri’ candidacy for Morena.

The PRI-PAN-PRD-PS-PAC’s candidate is Anabell Ávalos (PRI), the former mayor of Tlaxcala (2017-2020). She has little support of the incumbent governor, who has stated that he would not interfere in the election, and her main surrogates are former governors Mariano González (PRI) and Héctor Ortiz (PAN).

The other candidates are former PRD state deputy Eréndira Jiménez (MC), ex-panista Juan Carlos Sánchez (RSP), Viviana Barbosa Bonola (FxM), Liliana Becerril (PES) and Evangelina Paredes (Impacto Social Sí, local party).

Cuéllar is the clear favourite, leading in most polls. The last poll from El Financiero, just released, showed her leading by 10 points, 50% to 40%, up from 8 points in April (44-36).

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This is my final of the 15 state gubernatorial profiles. I hope they were easy to read and informative!

Zacatecas

Zacatecas is a poor, largely mountainous state in north-central Mexico.

In 1998, Zacatecas became the first state outside of Mexico City to be won by the PRD, following the victory of priista defector Ricardo Monreal. Until being passed over by the PRI in the gubernatorial selection process, Monreal had been a federal deputy (1988-1991, 1997-1998) and alternate senator (1991-1997) and was, at the time, the PRI caucus’ majority whip in the lower house. Supported by the PRD, Monreal won the election. Since leaving office, Monreal has gone on to serve as PRD/PT senator (2006-2012, for the PRD until 2008 and PT until 2012), MC federal deputy (2012-2015) and head of the delegation of Cuauhtémoc, DF for Morena (2015-2017). Elected to the Senate in 2018, Monreal is now coordinator of Morena in the Senate and president of the political coordination board of the Senate – making him one of the most powerful legislative operators for the government.

As governor, Monreal was accused by his critics of corruption, handing out loans to allies, favouritism, nepotism, coopting the media, marginalizing the opposition, and weakening social movements.

In 2004, the PRD retained the state with the comfortable victory of former senator Amalia García, daughter of a former governor and veteran left-wing activist. García won the PRD’s nomination after blocking Monreal’s attempt to impose his dauphin, and García and her predecessor became sworn rivals and traded accusations of narco ties. García played up the seizure of 14 tons of marijuana in a warehouse owned by one of Monreal’s brothers, while the Monreal family spread rumours that García had ties to Los Zetas or could have been complicit in the escape of 53 inmates from a maximum-security prison in 2009.

The PRI regained the state in 2010 with the victory of Miguel Alonso Reyes, Ricardo Monreal’s former private secretary, who won 43.2% against 23.2% for the PRD. While the Monreal clan was behind the candidacy of David Monreal (PT), who finished fourth with 13.6%, the PRI-PVEM’s candidate was seen as the family’s plan B to defeat the PRD candidate hand-picked by García. David Monreal had even briefly dropped out of the race in early 2010 in an unsuccessful bid to consolidate a PRI-PT alliance behind Reyes. Today, Reyes faces accusations of illicit enrichment, embezzlement and money laundering.

Five years ago, Alejandro Tello Cristerna (PRI-PVEM-PANAL) – who had been Reyes’ finance secretary (2010-2012) and came presented as a ‘technocrat’ favoured by the PRI’s national leadership – defeated David Monreal (Morena) by 10.4% - 38.5% to 28.1%. The PRD-PAN’s candidate won just 18.4%. It was Morena’s best performance in the 2016 state elections.

Both recent priista administrations are perceived as failures, marred by corruption, growing debt, unfinished or white elephant infrastructure projects, violence and insecurity.

In 2018, AMLO won 48.1% in the state against 23.3% for Meade and 20.6% for Anaya. Morena won the most seats in the state congress (9 out of 30), but the PRI and PAN still won the most municipalities.

Once again, the Morena-PT-PVEM-PANAL coalition’s candidate is David Monreal. David, Ricardo’s younger brother, was mayor of the family’s home turf of Fresnillo (2007-2010), succeeding another brother, Rodolfo Monreal, and later senator (2012-2018). Since AMLO’s victory, David Monreal had been national coordinator of livestock in the Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER). David has admitted that he obeys to two leaderships: that of AMLO and his brother Ricardo Monreal, who he calls ‘the guide of the movement’. The selection of David Monreal as Morena’s gubernatorial candidate, in the hopes that the third time’s the charm, displeased other factions within Morena, most notably senator José Narro Céspedes, a longstanding rival of the Monreal family.

The Monreal brothers are mixed up in the mysterious disappearance of Juan Carlos Guardado Méndez – David’s successor as mayor of Fresnillo (2010) – in 2011. The Guardado family are a business family with ties to the Monreal family – Ricardo Monreal’s wife is a first cousin of the Guardado Méndez – and Guardado’s family had financed David’s mayoral campaign but apparently felt that he was not rewarded as expected. In 2013, federal authorities dismantled a plot to assassinate the Monreal brothers. While authorities claimed that two of the men arrested were from the Zetas, in reality three of them were employees of Juan Carlos Guardado’s brother Arturo Guardado, who may have hired hitmen to kill the Monreal brothers.

Saúl Monreal, another of the Monreal brothers, is seeking re-election as mayor of Fresnillo, the family fiefdom. As mayor, he was criticized for spending public money on his daughter’s lavish fifteenth birthday party with over 600 guests, a pricey Colombian DJ and expensive food.

Monreal’s campaign has been hurt by several controversies and missteps. In April, a video showed David Monreal groping the butt of Morena’s mayoral candidate in Juchipila. He initially denied it as the creation of the ‘magic of technology’ and later downplayed it as an ‘involuntary touch’ taken out of context. The candidate herself defended Monreal as a respectful person and was angry that she was being ‘used’. Videos from other angles and of other moments of the same event also suggest that he probably groped more than once… A few days later, during a campaign event, Marco Flores of the Banda Jérez (now a Morena ‘pluri’ candidate) yelled arriba las pinches viejas (something like ‘get up, ing bitches’).

Three of the five women gubernatorial candidates (MC, PRI-PAN-PRD and PES) came together to publicly denounce Monreal and condemn violence against women. They also filed a complaint against Monreal and Marco Flores with the state electoral institute for gendered political violence.

The PRI-PAN-PRD’s candidate is senator (2018-2021) Claudia Anaya. Anaya is a former perredista who held public offices under the administrations of Ricardo Monreal and Amalia García, was a PRD federal deputy (2009-2012) and David Monreal’s ‘second formula’ senatorial candidate in 2012. She joined the PRI in 2013 and served as state deputy (2013-2015), federal deputy (2015-2018) and senator (since 2018). Anaya is considered close to EPN’s former finance secretary, Luis Videgaray.

Her candidacy was somewhat imposed by the national leaderships in Mexico City and displaced local political groups. The PRI – with the backing of the PAN and PRD – had been expected to support Adolfo Bonilla, state agriculture secretary and son of a former priista senator, who had the backing of Tello and Reyes. However, that name was rejected by the PRD national leadership.

The PES’ candidate is Guadalupe ‘Lupita’ Medina Padilla, a former PAN state deputy (2013-2016) from a traditional panista family (she’s related to former federal deputy and senator José Ramón Medina Padilla). She left the PAN in March 2021. Running a very socially conservative campaign replete with religious references, she has said that her candidacy is in response to a call from God and crediting God for giving her the leadership to be a candidate.

Among the PES’ candidates for state deputy, in district 1, is the former Morena mayor of Zacatecas, the capital, Ulises Mejía Haro. He had previously been blocked from seeking re-election in Zacatecas because of a sanction for gendered political violence (after making misogynistic comments about a city trustee). Just days ago, however, he got a favourable verdict from the regional chamber of the TEPJF allowing his candidacy, with the PES, to go ahead.

There were strong rumours that Morena senator José Narro was supporting Medina Padilla after being seen at a campaign event with her, but he later clarified that he was not supporting her (at least explicitly).

The MC’s candidate is Ana María Romo Fonseca, a former PRI state deputy and Miss Zacatecas 1987. Former PRD governor Amalia García Medina is now a MC ‘pluri’ candidate.

The other candidates are Miriam Zamora (FxM), Javier Valadez Becerra (Partido del Pueblo, local party) and Flavio Campos Miramontes (Paz para desarrollar Zacatecas, local party). Fernanda Salomé Perera (RSP), the first transgender woman to run for governor, dropped out and endorsed Monreal, while Bibiana Lizardo (Movimiento Dignidad Zacatecas, local party) withdrew in Anaya’s favour.

David Monreal began as the runaway favourite against a weak opponent, but his numbers took a very sharp hit in May – perhaps as the result of the viral groping video – and the race is now much closer, with some polls having Anaya leading. The last poll in May from El Financiero had him leading by 6 points (49 to 43), down from a 12-point lead in April. The last poll in Reforma had him leading Anaya by 5 points, 48 to 43. The same poll showed that 47% felt that the groping was inappropriate behaviour while 30% said it was an exaggeration to hurt him.

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RSP will run in 296 seats (new Leftist party)
FPM will run in 296 seats (MORENA splinter)
PES will run in 299 seats (Christian social conservative, ex-ally of MORENA.)  PES failed to win 3% in 2018 and got deregistered.  PES is trying to get around 3% this time around to become a registered party and get government funding.   

Just some minor corrections here. FxM (Force for Mexico) is not really a Morena splinter - it is perhaps an aspiring Morena satellite - but rather the property of Pedro Haces Barba (briefly Morena senator in 2018-9) and leader of the CATEM trade union confederation, which is styling itself as the 'new generation' of Mexican trade unionism accompanying the fourth transformation (in reality he has a dark priista past and is just as nasty and crooked as old charros). There are strong signals that Ricardo Monreal, Morena's leader in the Senate, is quietly supporting the party (his daughter is a pluri candidate for FxM). It is pretending to be a centrist progressive party, playing with feminist rhetoric and claiming to be the party of youth.

RSP (Progressive Social Networks) is pretending to be a centre-left party using a bunch of cool catchphrases. In reality it is owned by Elba Esther Gordillo, La Maestra, the infamously corrupt former leaders of the teachers' union SNTE. The party's leader is her son-in-law, her grandson is in the leadership, her daughter and nephew are among the party's candidates. Gordillo's main long-term goal is to retake control of the SNTE and is allied with AMLO, so RSP would be another Morena satellite party were it to survive. In its desperate bid to pass the 3% live-or-die threshold, it is running a wonderfully random bunch of memes, clowns, dumb celebrities, foul-mouthed actors, OnlyFans models, masked luchadores and cowboy cosplayers. My favourites are Alfredo Adame (an old Televisa soap actor) who is campaigning by telling voters to f!ck their mothers, or OnlyFans model Rocío Pina who is promising free new tits for women while posing semi-nude.

PES 2.0 is indeed the same old crap as PES 1.0, and not really 'former' allies of Morena - they still very much are Morena allies, with their added value being crude homophobia and anti-abortion histrionics. Their concerns for women's wellbeing is kind of belied by the fact that Hank is among their candidates.

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How interesting.   I thought Esther Gordillo and AMLO were on very bad terms.  I had not idea that she is now allied with AMLO.  Was not PANAL a Esther Gordillo party ?  I guess with PANAL gone at the national after the 2018 she is forming another political party.

Gordillo's cronies (her family members) publicly supported AMLO from late 2017/early 2018, and AMLO signalled that they were welcome by significantly shifting his opinion on her - after holding her responsible for the 'fraud' in 2006 and considering her part of the 'mafia of power', he is now saying that there's no scandal to be made about her, or that the 'law was twisted' in her case. They both shared a common opposition to EPN's education reform, which has since been repealed and replaced.

PANAL was indeed initially owned by Gordillo, although she lost control of it during EPN's sexenio after her arrest and while it was still owned by the SNTE (now controlled by 'traitors' who 'betrayed' her after 2013), the party became a PRI satellite, probably as the then-PRI government needed to find a modus vivendi with the SNTE to protect its education reforms against the protests of the more radical unions. After PANAL lost its registration, a group tried to resurrect it as a political party, but its registration was denied because of the overwhelming evidence of the huge role of the SNTE its creation.

So all three parties goal is to prove their "worth" by passing the 3% threshold and try to join MORENA lead alliance in 2024?

In theory, yes, that'd be my guess. But these parties are all opportunists and three years is a very long time, so if the winds blow differently, their attitude might change. After all, until 2017, there were strong indications that PES 1.0 had some underhanded support from PRI factions, namely Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong's group in Hidalgo, and a lot of people therefore assumed it would ally with the PRI (as it did in the 2017 Edomex state elections). Of course, Osorio Chong wasn't the candidate in 2018 so we'll never know whether the PES would have supported him in an alternate reality where he was the candidate...

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The idea is even if parties have alliances and have a joint candidate the vote still should indicate their party preference (or vote for independent candidate if any) to be the input to compute the PR seat allocations.

FTR, you can also vote for any combination of two or more parties in coalition. For example, with a Morena-PT-PVEM coalition candidate, you can vote individually for any of these parties or vote Morena+PT, Morena+PVEM, PVEM+PT or Morena+PT+PVEM. Such votes in combination get counted as one vote for the district candidate, and votes in combination are then divided equally between the parties in question for the PR calculations (i.e. 200 votes for Morena+PT would be divided equally, 100 votes for each).

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For the record, El Financiero's exit polls only indicated certainty in Qro. (for PAN) - for all other states they give an 'advantage' to a certain candidate, but they're making it clear that this does not declare a winner.

Given that it's early days and this means that everyone and their grandmother are self-proclaiming themselves as winners, might be best to ignore a lot of noise until tomorrow morning...

But yes, a two-thirds majority for the 4T seems increasingly unlikely. Good news!

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Baja California (71.3% in)

MORENA-PVEM-PT     48.24%
PES                          31.33%  !!
PAN-PRI-PRD            11.68%

PAN-PRI-PRD candidate is an independent so the PAN vote it seems went to PES

I've written about this in my first preview write-up post some pages down. The PES candidate is the notorious (ex-)priista businessman, crook and crazy person Jorge Hank Rhon. With Lupita Jones being a really terrible candidate, the state PRI - which never wanted her, but was forced to go along by the national PRI - abandoned her and endorsed Hank Rhon a week or so ago. If anything, Hank probably got a lot of the PRI vote (and likely some of the PAN vote as well).

Really a strong result for Morena in BC, in spite of their last two years in power in the state being disastrous. Marina del Pilar did a very solid job in avoiding being tarnished by Bonilla's unpopularity. Also helps that the PAN, which governed BC for 30 years, is still in very bad shape.

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There were no state legislative elections in QRoo, only municipal elections.

PREP in Edomex can be accessed separately here: https://ieem.milenio.com/prep_ieem_escritorio/diputados/voto_x_distrito.html.

The outcome is basically tied: 22 districts for Morena et al. against a combined total of 23 for the PRI-PAN-PRD. In 2018, Morena had won all but 3 districts, so this is a significant gain for the opposition. In detail, the PAN won back lost ground in the so-called 'blue corridor', and the opposition also gained in Toluca and the rural western half of the state (and elsewhere like Tecámac and Los Reyes Acaquilpan). Morena retained much of the Valley of Mexico except for the blue corridor, including all the districts in Neza and Ecatepec.

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BTW, the PT candidates are mostly bogus and almost certainly directly controlled by AMLO which makes them de facto MORENA candidate despite their PT party label.  This is all just a ploy to get around the 8% rule.

Certainly was the case in 2018 and undoubtedly there'll be lots of defectors to and from Morena/PT/others in this new legislature, but the INE has approved new rules to avoid partisan overrepresentation (i.e. getting around the 8% rule) of the kind that benefited Morena in 2018, consisting of verifying the 'effective affiliation' of each fptp candidate in a coalition at the time of their registration. The INE verified the affiliation of candidates (as of Mar. 21) in May. Here is the full text of their decision.

It was actually in the case of VxM did they find the most simulated candidacies, reassigning the distribution as follows: PAN 88 (+11), PRI 69 (-2), PRD 61 (-9). In the Morena and friends coalition, they only found two simulated candidacies, both Morena candidacies who were actually PT and PVEM members respectively.

Also worth noting that the PT was, with Morena, the parliamentary group that benefited the most from defections between 2018 and 2021. It's a good party for defectors of various stripes, it's not only a fake label.

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Given how machismo Mexican culture is, this is a notable achievement by women:

Women score historic wins in Mexico's mid-term elections

My impression is that this was top-down.  Meaning AMLO mandated a certain quota of female candidates for MORENA.

It certainly was, but had little to do with AMLO (who doesn't care or know about gender equality). Gender equity and now gender parity in candidacies for elected office has been making its way since the 1990s. The current electoral law, adopted in 2013, mandates gender parity in candidacies for Congress, state congresses and municipalities. A 2019 constitutional reform, adopted unanimously, enshrines these gender parity requirements and extended it to all three branches of government including the Supreme Court, cabinet appointments and autonomous institutions.

In November 2020, the INE approved rules requiring gender parity in the 15 gubernatorial elections, stipulating that parties would need to run at least 7 women. In December 2020, the TEPJF revoked the INE's decision considering that it lacked the power to do so, but its ruling still required parties to run 7 women for governor.

While gender parity requirements meant that Congress is now evenly split between men and women (48.2% women in the lower house in 2018, 49.2% of women in the Senate), governorships were the last remaining male-dominated world: only seven women had ever been elected governors prior to 2021 and only two women were governors/heads of government (Sonora, CDMX) prior to this election out of 32 states.