Key Issues at Stake in the Upcoming 2024 Mexican Elections Mark Stevenson - Associated Press
go to original March 7, 2024

Presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum greets supporters upon her arrival to her opening campaign rally at the Zocalo in Mexico City. General Elections are set for June 2. (Aurea Del Rosario/AP)

Mexico is almost certainly about to get its first woman president.

Ruling-party candidate Claudia Sheinbaum leads in polls on the race leading to the June 2 vote. The second-place candidate is also a woman. A man running for a small third party essentially has no chance of winning.

Popular President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is barred by law from running for another six-year term, and Sheinbaum is running for his Morena party. Businesswoman, senator and Indigenous Affairs official Xóchitl Gálvez has an uphill battle, backed by a coalition of all the main opposition parties.

Sheinbaum, Mexico City’s former mayor, has a doctorate in energy engineering and a long career in leftist politics. Gálvez helped her family by selling tamales in the street as a girl. She went on to earn a degree in computer engineering and start her own tech companies.

López Obrador has tried mightily to eliminate checks and balances, regulatory oversight and the role of non-governmental organizations. He has accumulated more centralized power than any president since the heyday of the PRI in the 1970s, an era for which he expresses open nostalgia.

His main tool of governance has been the army, which has built a portfolio of railways, an airline, airports and hotels. Mexico’s army, unlike many other Latin American nations’, has not become involved in politics through coups or candidacies since the 1940s. But many worry that the Morena party’s continued dominance might endanger that old arrangement.

Whoever wins, the outgoing president is leaving a pile of ambitious, unfinished projects, obligations and debt. López Obrador has pledged to retire entirely from politics after he leaves office, but few people believe that a man who has basically spent every waking minute for the last 30 years driving toward his political goals will give that up so easily.

Read the rest at Associated Press

Related: Why Mexico’s Ruling Party Candidate Is Already Dominating the Presidential Race (The New York Times)

Related: Mexico Is About to Have Its Biggest Election Ever. Here’s What to Know (Associated Press)

Related: Can Mexico Move Past Its Authoritarian Streak With a New President? (Washington Post)

Related: What to Know About the 2 Candidates Running for Mexico's Presidency (NPR)

Related: Organized Crime Attacks on Local Candidates Raise Fears Mexico May Face Its Bloodiest Elections Ever (Associated Press)

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