Mexico’s ruling left-wing Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena) has convincingly won the gubernatorial elections in Estado de México (Edomex). Mexico’s most populous state, Edomex wields great campaigning power and holding it will be of strategic significance for Morena ahead of the 2024 presidential elections. It is a symbolically important state and its loss comes as a body blow for the opposition Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which had governed the state uninterrupted for decades. The PRI has seen its dominance at state level consistently eroded since President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took power in 2018, and Edomex was its last major stronghold. The PRI’s convincing win in Coahuila will offer limited solace for the beleaguered former powerhouse as all eyes turn to 2024, but it does mean that it retains two out of the country’s 32 state governorships along with Durango.
Morena’s Delfina Gómez, running for governor of Edomex in coalition with national-level allies the Maoist Partido del Trabajo (PT) and ideologically amorphous Partido Verde Ecologista de México (PVEM), took 52.66% of the vote, according to rapid-count preliminary results (Prep) from the vote on 4 June. Meanwhile, the PRI’s Alejandra del Moral, who was running in coalition with the parties that make up the national opposition Va por México alliance with the centrist PRI, the right-wing Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) and the left-wing Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), as well as local party Nueva Alianza (Panal), received 44.3%.
Gómez, a former federal education minister and senator, took to Twitter to celebrate her victory, stating that the vote marked “a watershed moment”. Gómez narrowly lost out in the 2017 race to govern the state, beaten by the PRI’s Alfredo del Mazo, who tweeted that he wished Gómez “the greatest success for the good of Estado de México”. Leading Morena figures including potential 2024 presidential candidates - Claudia Sheinbaum, the mayor of Mexico City (CDMX), and Marcelo Ebrard, the foreign minister - also issued congratulations to Gómez.
As the rapid vote count was progressing on the evening of 4 June, Del Moral unexpectedly declared herself the winner of the race, with PRI national leader Alejandro Moreno similarly stating that his party had taken the state. Indeed, the contest was more closely contested than many pollsters had predicted, although it soon became clear who the real winner was. Ultimately, the PRI did not question the Prep results and Del Moral accepted defeat in a press conference a few hours later.
With these results, Edomex is out of PRI hands for the first time since 1929. If Del Moral had been successful, the party and its previous iterations would have ruled the state for 100 consecutive years by the end of her term. Edomex is the PRI powerbase. It is home to the near-mythical Grupo Atlacomulco, the influential PRI family clan that has dominated politics in the state for decades. Among the state’s previous PRI governors is former president Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), who was elected as Mexico’s president immediately following his stint as Edomex governor from 2005-2011, where he was succeeded by Del Mazo, his cousin.
However, its loss cannot have come as a major surprise. The gubernatorial race in 2017 was close: Del Mazo won by a mere 170,000 votes, a difference of just 2.8 percentage points (in 2011 Peña Nieto had triumphed by as much as 41 points). Although the PRI held onto the state, it suffered big losses in state legislative elections the following year, and was left in control of only 23 of the state’s 125 mayoralties, while Morena controlled 48. The PRI regained ground in the state legislature and at a municipal level in the 2021 elections but only in alliance with the PAN and PRD for the first time.
The loss of Edomex is emblematic of the PRI’s general decline in recent years. Of the 12 states it governed when President López Obrador took office in 2018, Coahuila and Durango (in June last year) are the only ones it has managed to retain. It has been haemorrhaging support, with its membership having fallen from 8m six years ago to barely 2m now.
Gómez credited López Obrador with her victory, which she described as “part of a process that began years ago, part of a bigger struggle, a struggle led by someone that has managed to inspire us…showing us this new way where the people are the beginning and end of everything, where there is no space or time for corruption, and where all Mexicans can share in advancing together.” She presented the elections as a struggle based on Manichean dichotomies, where “honesty triumphed over corruption, simplicity over privilege, closeness to the people over indolence, humanism over racism”.
In this context, there is no question that Gómez benefitted from the publication on 31 May, just days before the elections, of allegations of massive fraud and embezzlement by the PRI state government. Forbidden Stories, a network of journalists established in its own words “to protect, pursue and publish the work of other journalists facing threats, prison, or murder” published the findings of Mexican journalist María Teresa Montaño Delgado, who was kidnapped in August 2021 while investigating public sector fraud in Mexico, whose work it continued. This alleged that the incumbent state government embezzled nearly M$5bn (US$287m) of public funds by means of some 40 fake contracts with at least 15 front companies. Some of these were signed off on by Del Moral, who was serving as social development minister in Del Mazo’s state government.
Coahuila provides crumb of comfort
Del Moral was left to concede defeat in Edomex alone while the leaders of the PRI (Alejandro Moreno), the PAN (Marko Cortés), and the PRD (Jesús Zambrano) abandoned her to fly from Toluca, the capital of Edomex, to Saltillo, the capital of Coahuila, to be seen with a victor. The solid performance of the PRI’s candidate in Coahuila provides a glimmer of hope for the party and the Va por México alliance. Manolo Jiménez, running in coalition with the PAN and PRD, held onto the state for the PRI with a resounding 56.9% of the vote. Morena’s Armando Guadiana placed a distant second, securing only 21.5% of the vote, while the PT’s Ricardo Mejía Berdeja took 13.3% and Lenin Pérez, running for PVEM and local outfit the Unidad Democrática de Coahuila (UDC), took 5.9%.
As well as providing the PRI with a much-needed victory, the race in Coahuila, a midsize state in terms of population on the north-eastern border with the US, also revealed the cracks within Morena. Mejía left his role as federal deputy security minister after losing the contest to become Morena’s candidate in Coahuila, in a process he denounced as containing irregularities. The PVEM also fielded its own candidate, further splitting the vote. The national leadership of both the PT and PVEM switched support to Guadiana at the last minute, sparking indignation from their candidates who accused the federal government of pressuring the parties.
Morena now governs in 21 states, with two more governed by allied parties (PVEM in San Luis Potosí and Partido Encuentro Social [PES] in Morelos). The PRI by contrast will govern in Coahuila and Durango in coalition with the PAN and PRD, while a PAN candidate won for Va por México in Aguascalientes. The PAN holds a further four states – Chihuahua, Guanajuato, Querétaro, and Yucatán. The opposition-aligned left-of-centre Movimiento Ciudadano (MC), which has repeatedly rejected calls to join the Va por México coalition, governs in Nuevo León and Jalisco.
Looking to 2024
The focus for all parties is now squarely on the 2024 presidential race. Indeed, even prior to the state elections it was clear that the 2024 contest was front-of-mind for Morena’s main potential contenders – Sheinbaum, Ebrard, and the interior minister, Adán Augusto López – who have been attending events in recent weeks that look suspiciously like campaigning, despite the formal campaign period not having begun [WR-23-20].
Morena is going full steam ahead with deciding its candidate for 2024 now that the gubernatorial races are over, with its national council convening on 11 June in order to discuss the selection method. As well as Ebrard, Sheinbaum, and López, Morena’s senate leader Ricardo Monreal is also in the running. Morena’s national leader Mario Delgado has also invited candidates from allied parties to compete in the contest, with these most likely being a PVEM senator, Manuel Velasco, the former governor of the southernmost state of Chiapas (2012-2018), and a veteran PT deputy, Gerardo Fernández Noroña, a founding member of the PRD.
Ebrard, who has never been shy about his presidential ambitions, has already announced that he will resign as foreign minister the day after the national council meets, in order to fully concentrate on his campaign. The other potential candidates appear to be biding their time before making such a move. Given the win in Edomex, the enduring popularity of President López Obrador, and the high-profile nature of its presidential aspirants, Morena’s eventual candidate will be in a strong position to be elected president next year.
Following the gubernatorial elections, Cortés, Moreno, and Zambrano also announced that the Va por México alliance would implement working groups in order to define its own method for selecting a presidential candidate, which would be announced by 26 June. These will be comprised of politicians and members of civil society groups. This is likely to go some way towards appeasing the PRD, whose leader Zambrano has insisted on having citizens involved in the selection process. The PRD has so far felt somewhat sidelined in discussions around selecting candidates for the coalition. The emphasis on citizen involvement indicates that, in spite of internal differences, the coalition is committed to remaining united and to establishing a selection process that is acceptable to all members of the alliance.
Va por México once again called on the MC to join the coalition in order to avoid splitting the opposition vote. MC leader Dante Delgado responded by likening joining Va por México to boarding the Titanic, “a sinking ship destined to fail”. He stated that the MC was the only real alternative to Morena and that the party’s general council would meet at the start of July to discuss the 2024 elections.
A governorship of firsts
As well as being the first non-PRI politician to govern in Edomex, Delfina Gómez also becomes the first female to hold the top job in the state. Gómez has pledged her commitment to mothers of disappeared people and victims of femicide. This is a key issue in Edomex, which recorded the highest number of femicides (138) of any other Mexican state last year. According to Mexico’s national public security system (SESNSP), Edomex registered 36 femicides in the first four months of this year, more than any other state.
Ebrard ahead
Morena’s other ‘corcholatas’, as the party’s potential presidential candidates are known, have indicated they will wait until after the general council’s meeting to announce resignations from their current roles. The council will define dates for various stages of the selection process, the surveys that will take place, and requirements for participants, indicating whether it will indeed be necessary to resign at such an early stage. Following Marcelo Ebrard’s announcement, Adán Augusto López tweeted that “politics must be built on the balance between reason and passion”, indicating Ebrard had perhaps been too hasty. Ricardo Monreal, meanwhile, has given interviews to the local press indicating Ebrard is getting ahead as part of his campaign strategy.
