Toluca, Mex., On June 4, elections will be held to elect the governor of the state of Mexico. For the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has governed the entity for more than 90 years, not only the state Executive Power is at stake, but also the survival of a dominant political class for almost a century.
On the other hand, for Morena, who begins the process at the head of the electoral preferences, it represents the best opportunity to make the alternation a reality and take a firm step to preserve the Presidency of the Republic due to the political weight of the state, with more than 12 millions of voters
Although the process to renew the governorship formally begins today, the contest began a few months ago; the parties practically have their candidacies defined and those who aspire to succeed Alfredo del Mazo Maza resort to all kinds of promotion. In addition, the parties have tied alliances to face the contest.
The PRI agreed to join the National Action (PAN) and the Democratic Revolution (PRD) parties in a coalition.
Last September, deputies from these three institutes gathered enough votes in the Mexican Congress to modify the electoral law and the local Constitution, so that from the coalition agreement that they register with the Electoral Institute of the State of Mexico (IEEM) detail what spaces or positions will correspond to each party in the next government, in case of winning the vote. Said reforms were challenged by Morena, and the resolution of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation is awaited.
The three parties assure that they will establish the first coalition government in the country.
In the PRI, PAN and PRD alliance there are three candidates for the nomination: the PAN member Enrique Vargas, who has been promoted for more than two years, although he has said that he would decline in favor of another candidate if he guarantees that Morena does not come to power; PRD member Omar Ortega, who was leader of his party and coordinator of local deputies, as well as PRI member Alejandra del Moral Vela, former state secretary for Social Development and former president of the Mexican PRI.
Del Moral Vela is shaping up to be the standard bearer of the coalition, since the PRI is not only the party with the most structure and votes of the three that make up the alliance, but also has begun an intense campaign to position the tricolor with spectacular announcements throughout the state geography, and a management of social networks aimed at exalting its image and placing it in the imaginary as the one in charge of “defending the state of Mexico” from the Fourth Transformation.
In turn, Morena defined since the previous August that Delfina Gómez Álvarez represent him at the polls. Morena seeks to seal an alliance with the parties of Labor (PT), Green Ecologist of Mexico (PVEM) and the local institute Nueva Alianza Estado de México, which the PRI is also looking for.
Delfina Gómez was appointed coordinator of the Defense Committees of the Fourth Transformation; In that capacity, she has traveled the state and has met with the Morena structure in the entity.
It will be the second time that Gómez has run for governor. Five years ago she faced Del Mazo Maza and obtained more votes as a Morena candidate than the current governor as a PRI standard-bearer; the difference was based on the votes that the PVEM contributed to stay with the Executive Power.
Now, all the surveys and demoscopic exercises in the entity place Gómez Álvarez well ahead of the rest of the candidates for governor, and Morena as the party with the highest electoral preference in the state. Some polls give him a two-to-one lead.
Morena lacks a solid territorial structure throughout the state; However, to remedy this deficiency, he sent Horacio Duarte, former director of federal Customs, so that he could help organize his party in the entity and coordinate the Delfina Gómez campaign.
The PRI is the party with the largest structure in the entire state territory and the best organized. It has committees installed in more than 6 thousand 500 sectionals and the president of the tricolor, Éric Sevilla has reiterated that he has an army of 75,000 PRI members ready to promote the vote and represent his party in the little more than 20,000 polling stations that will be installed on June 4.
In addition, it has recruited more than 90 electoral operators from all the groups of the Mexican PRI, and has entrusted them with activism and operating the campaign in regions and municipalities.
In this structure of electoral operators there are figures very close to former governors Emilio Chuayffet, Arturo Montiel, César Camacho, Eruviel Ávila and even Enrique Peña Nieto, who had remained on the sidelines of political-partisan activities.
Beyond the polls, analysts predict that it will be a very close contest between the PRI-PAN-PRD and Morena-PT-PVEM alliances. The participation of Movimiento Ciudadano is considered testimonial, since it has not defined a standard-bearer nor has significant local activity been noted in recent months.
Meanwhile, four people seek to participate as independent candidates for governor. The four, two men and two women, hope to collect 367,000 signatures of citizen support in order to reach the nomination.
One of the applicants, Abelardo Gorostieta, already tried to run for the Mexican government in 2017, but this restaurant entrepreneur did not gather the necessary signatures. Another who is seeking an independent candidacy is Jesús Iván Pinto, a former state official who in the last decade worked alongside Alfredo del Mazo, since he was director of Banobras.
The other two candidates are María del Rosario Mendoza Gómez and Ana Elena Medina Pacheco, with no significant background in the entity’s political work.
These elections will be among the most expensive in history. The IEEM will have a budget of 2,789 million pesos, of which 1,307 million will correspond to the financing that the parties will receive for permanent actions and obtaining the vote. The rest will be to organize, develop and monitor the elections.
As part of the electoral process, for the first time there will be face-to-face voting by Mexicans abroad. Polling stations are scheduled to be installed at consulates in Dallas, Texas; Chicago, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California, in the United States, as well as in Toronto, Quebec and Montreal, in Canada, in addition to the suffrages that can be cast electronically from other countries, and postal voting.
A pilot program will also be explored for people detained in Mexican prisons to vote, which house just over 20,000 inmates.
If the participation of two women as candidates of the coalitions with the most chances of victory materializes, the state of Mexico could have the first female governor in its history.