Mexico’s former ruling party could face near-extinction in Sunday's governorship election in the State of Mexico, the largest of Mexico’s 32 states and the last large one governed by the old Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI.
The race could also mark a high point for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Morena party, which has imitated — and largely replaced — the old PRI across the rest of Mexico. Nearly five years into his single six-year term, López Obrador remains highly popular.
Polls suggest Morena could win by a wide margin in the State of Mexico, a contest seen by many as a preview of next year's presidential elections, in which the party is also seen as the favorite.
While the PRI might still hold on to the sparsely populated northern state of Coahuila, which is also electing a new governor Sunday, the loss of Mexico State — a mix of suburbs, slums and agricultural communities that surrounds Mexico City on three sides — would probably spell the end of the PRI as a major player.
For a party that held the presidency without interruption from 1929 to 2000 — and has governed the State of Mexico for 94 years — it would be a humiliating end.
“After June 4 if the PRI loses, you can assert with clarity that it no longer has a future, even though it might take a while to disappear. It might hold on at a regional or local level, but not on a national level. It is coming to its end," said political analyst Benedicto Ruiz Vargas.
Ruiz Vargas has seen in his home state of Baja California what happens when the PRI goes into a death spiral; many of its members either retire or seek to join Morena. “The old guard that has always been there are governing within a new party. It is the PRI mutating into Morena,” he said.
That would suit López Obrador just fine. Many of the top positions in his government are occupied by former PRI members, like himself.
Sociologist Bernardo Barranco says López Obrador is a bit of a throwback to the charismatic PRI presidents of the 1960s and 70s, who gave out government-built apartments and government-run grocery stores. Unfortunately, they were also corrupt and ran the economy into the ground.
López Obrador “has a style like the PRI had in the 1960s," Barranco said, adding “there is a nostalgia for that protective state that looked out for people's incomes.”
In Mexico State, where the current, patrician Gov. Alfredo del Mazo is a third generation PRI politician and governor, López Obrador’s party is running Delfina Gómez, a not very charismatic former schoolteacher whose demeanor very much comes from the classroom.
PRI is running Alejandra del Moral, a former mayor with a long list of university degrees.
But the deciding factors for voters in the State of Mexico are much earthier, and have to do with survival.
When work is scarce, refrigeration technician Juan Ayala runs a small stand selling sunglasses, hats and toys on the sidewalk of the huge municipality of Ecatepec.
He is sure Morena candidate Delfina Gómez will win, because he — like many others in the rough Mexico City suburb — is tired of corruption that has lasted almost a century.
As a reporter speaks with him, a burly young man from a shadowy “autonomous social organization” — that's what it says on his jacket — passes through and silently demands 50 pesos in payment from every vendor on the side walk, and takes a photo of each one after they pay. The vendors say it happens every week, and those who don’t pay are banned from selling.
“It's wrong, because they get rich off it. They've been doing it for 50 years," Ayala said.
Leonaro Gonzalez, 61, who works as part of a cleaning crew, says she hopes the PRI will win, if only to return to a past time when crime wasn’t so bad in the State of Mexico. Crime is so common here that when young men carrying pistols climb aboard commuter vans here, they simply announce robberies with phrase “you know the routine, people, wallets and cell phones.”
Gonzalez herself had her wallet and cellphone stolen at gunpoint recently as she exited a subway station at night after a long day's work.
“It feels terrible, what little you have, and they take it,” said González. “Before, there wasn't so much crime. Now you don't feel safe. You can't even go out at night."
Everyone agrees that the bigger issues of national party politics aren’t the deciding factor in this largely poor state: Direct cash payments are.
López Obrador established a monthly food aid payment for people over 65 that currently pays about $135 per month. For many here, that — along with scholarships for high school students and other aid programs — are key.
“The issue here is basically money,” said businessman Carlos Sanchez, who says his mother-in-law was able to fix up her house by saving up three months of López Obrador's monthly payments.
The PRI tried a similar strategy with a debit card dubbed “the Pink Salary” for housewives, but Sanchez said there were often no funds deposited in the cards.
In addition, Sanchez says his high school age son is eligible for a $150 per month scholarship. “Morena may be the same as the other parties, but at least they do give us things,” he said.
It is all part of López Obrador's ability to tap into a deep historical vein of Mexican leadership as the benevolent leader.
“Morena has to win. The old age pensions, all the other benefits. They give out the wealth of the nation, while the other parties in the past gave you a bag of food or a water tank,” said Ayala, the refrigeration tech.
Barranco, who formerly served on the elections board in the State of Mexico, said the PRI's own history weighs against it, noting it's hard to convince people you represent a change if you've been in power for 94 years.
While the PRI once produced charismatic if corrupt leaders who were able to provide handouts from the country's oil wealth or a long stretch of economic growth, by the 1980s economic crises forced the party into a more technocratic, neo-liberal mode.
“On average, seven out of ten people in the State of Mexico want a change. They are sick and tired of the ruling party,” Barranco said.
