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Mexico's PRI poised for key victory in governor's race

MEXICO CITY — Five years after the "perfect dictatorship" came tumbling down, the Institutional Revolutionary Party is showing it still knows how to win elections.

With polls indicating the PRI will breeze to victory Sunday in Mexico's most important non-presidential race — the governor's seat in the State of Mexico — PRI leaders are feeling good about their chances to return to the presidency in 2006.

Often described as a "thermometer" or "laboratory" for the national political landscape, the State of Mexico is in many ways of snapshot of modern Mexico: curving around massive Mexico City, the country's most populous state contains sprawling urban slums, enclaves of affluent suburbs and rural pueblos. All three of the political parties vying for the presidency in 2006 are well-represented in the state.

In January, the state was anyone's race. But half a year and millions of dollars in campaign spending later, the PRI candidate, a 38-year-old party functionary with movie star looks, has distanced himself from the competition and carries a lead of almost 20 percentage points in the polls heading into the weekend. The PRI also seems poised to retake the governorship of Nayarit, a small state on the Pacific coast, on Sunday.

The left-leaning Democratic Revolutionary Party and the right-leaning National Action Party of President Vicente Fox hope that any setback this weekend will not send a signal about the presidential election. But the PRI is looking to Sunday's vote for a message that the Mexican people are ready to take them back.

"The PRI has learned from its defeat and the people have learned a lesson about those who promise the sky and deliver nothing," wrote PRI federal deputy Francisco Rojas earlier this month. "Despite those who want to dig our grave, the PRI will stick around for a little longer."

The PRI has demonstrated that it still has the machinery to grind out victories; it has won 13 of the 26 governors races since 2000. According to a May poll by the Mitofsky Group, 37 percent of Mexicans identify themselves as PRI members, while 27 percent say they belong to the PAN and 18 percent to the PRD — all numbers that have held fairly steady. The party still counts on loyal support of public sector unions and has used its governorships in 16 of the 31 states to maintain its system of power.

And according to their opponents, the PRI is still not above using chicanery reminiscent of the bad old days to win elections. Videotape captured PRI officials in April handing out seed and farm equipment to State of Mexico residents as they urged the potential voters to vote for their candidate Enrique Pena Nieto.

The PRI also has spent heavily to promote Nieto, whose alternately smiling and stern face stares out at Mexicans from countless billboards and subway cars. Nieto's campaign slogan leaves little room for doubt: "Your Governor, 2005-2011." The PRD and PAN accuse Nieto's campaign of far overspending its federally mandated $20 million limit and plan to use the PRI's spending as the basis to challenge the election results.

A win by Nieto would renew the question of why Mexicans are willing to embrace a party that, by means both legitimate and not, orchestrated 71 straight years of electoral victories before Fox ousted it in 2000, setting off joyous street celebrations.

Part of the answer to the PRI's stubborn success may lie in what many see as the abject failure of Fox's administration. The buoyant optimism of his first years has given way to frustration as nearly every major promise Fox made — from job creation to an immigration accord with the U.S. to tax and budget reform — has been stymied, often by congressional opposition.

"For many, the PRI could also be vaccine against the paralysis that has affected the government of Vicente Fox," wrote political columnist Jorge Camil recently. "Disenchantment with the 'Government of Change' could induce many to vote once again for the party that many Mexicans begin to identify as 'the party that knows how to govern.'"

And while analysts often criticize the PRI for having no ideology except the thirst for power, PRI officials have begun using that as an advantage. At Nieto's last campaign rally, former state of Mexico governor Cesar Camacho told supporters that the fresh-faced candidate represents a centrist alternative to the "pragmatic right-wing" of the PAN and a "rigid leftism" offered by the PRD.

This is not to say that the PRI will face an easy path to the presidency. Its leadership is torn by a bitter rift between party chairman Roberto Madrazo, who his critics call a dinosaur representative of the party's authoritarian past, and a group of five governors seeking to renovate and democratize the party.

Madrazo has officially declared his candidacy for president and promises a tough fight with the group of governors, officially called Democratic Unity, over who will represent the PRI in 2006. Nieto's victory could give a boost to his political godfather Arturo Montiel, the current governor of the state and member of the group.

And whoever emerges as the PRI presidential candidate will have to overcome the large lead of PRD candidate and Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who according to the same May Mitofsky poll, is favored by 42 percent of the electorate. Madrazo places second with 24 percent and potential PAN candidate Santiago Creel is third with 20 percent. Given the PRD's low base of support, Lopez Obrador will have to wrest votes from self-described Priistas if he is to win, analysts say.

Lopez Obrador's popularity, helped by a clumsy attempt by the PRI and PAN to disqualify him from the 2006 race based on a minor land dispute, has not rubbed off on his party's candidate for the State of Mexico, the charismatically challenged Yeidckol Polevnsky. Despite vowing to transplant Lopez Obrador's wildly popular social programs from Mexico City to the State of Mexico, the 44-year-old businesswoman and political novice has generated no traction.

The PAN candidate, Ruben Mendoza Ayala, 44, has been even more of a mystery and has gone from leading the polls in February to third place. Ayala, mayor of Tlalnepantla, has been plagued by erratic behavior on the campaign trail (he wept openly at a rally in May, complaining about press coverage) and the unfortunate campaign slogan of "Yes, I am ugly, but I know how to govern."

In a campaign in which transportation and safety have been primary issues, Ayala and Lopez Obrador have made little headway. Their best strategy now may be trying to nullify the election based on Nieto's campaign overspending, which the PRI denies. Political analyst Jose Antonio Crespo warned that the PRI's big spending, which propelled a political unknown with a handsome face into the lead, could be the ultimate lesson of the election.

"It's a bad precedent that could negatively affect 2006," Crespo said.

"The (PRI) hasn't offered any ideas. ... Once this money got pumped in, people

became fixated on the image."