Race for the 2018-2024 Mexican Presidency Has Already Begun Frontera NorteSur
go to original November 22, 2016

2018 hopeful Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador takes a selfie with supporters during Morena's National Conference in Mexico City (Morena)

Amid the turmoil emanating from the U.S. election, Mexico is entering its own presidential transition period. Though political reforms have shortened the length of formal campaigns (which don’t commence until early 2018), and placed some restrictions on media access by the political parties, for all intents and purposes the 2018 race is already in the go mode.

More than a year and a half before Mexicans go to the polls, a dozen possible successors to Enrique Peña Nieto are the focus of voter surveys, public and private meetings, and increased media attention. At least two of the potential presidential contestants could be women, though the candidacy of one has yet to be decided.

Plenty of time remains for dark horses to prance onto the scene, and changed conditions by 2018 could greatly shift the parameters, personalities and politics of the campaign, but as of late 2016 the favorites are already shining in the spotlight.

For the conservative National Action Party (PAN), which hopes to regain Los Pinos (the Mexican White House) after losing it four years ago to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) following 12 years of PAN rule, the current hopefuls include Margarita Zavala, the wife of former President Felipe Calderon; party chief Ricardo Anaya; Rafael Moreno Valle, the controversial governor of Puebla state; and Ernesto Ruffo, who’s regarded as a historic figure for his Baja California victory that made him the first PAN governor elected in the country back in 1989.

For the ruling PRI, the names topping the list include Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong; Eruviel Avila, governor of Mexico state, the crime ridden and most populous political entity in the country; Education Secretary Aurelio Nuño, whose career has been defined by a bitter and bloody battle with the National Coordinator of Education Workers over unpopular reforms; former Sonora governor Manlio Fabio Beltrones, a longtime pillar of the Mexican political class; and Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade, the overseer of the latest round of budget cuts.

On the center-left, Mexico City Mayor Miguel Mancera is repeatedly mentioned as the leading possibility for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), while two-time presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) of the Morena Party is aiming to make three his lucky number.

Other prospective candidacies could give the 2018 election a different flavor than preceding ones. Talk is rampant of now-permitted independent candidacies outside the framework of the oft-criticized political parties, of which nine currently exist at the national level. In this vein, the governor of the northern border state of Nuevo Leon, Jaime “El Bronco” Rodriguez Calderon, has already signaled his interest.

Read the rest at MexiData

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