President’s Party Looks to Clean Up in State Races in Mexico Mark Stevenson - Associated Press
go to original June 4, 2022

Supporters of presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, of the Morena party, wait for his arrival at Mexico City’s Zocalo plaza. (Associated Press)

Update: Mexico President’s Party Wins 4 of 6 Governorships on Ballot (Associated Press)

Mexico’s ruling Morena party looks poised to win at least four of the six races for state governorships Sunday on the back of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, its folksy, charismatic leader, and the absence of a credible opposition, analysts say.

Ironically, at its point of greatest power, Morena may also be about to enter its phase of greatest vulnerability: the young party must take control of an intractably cartel-dominated border state like Tamaulipas, and launch a divisive internal contest to see who will replace López Obrador when he leaves office in 2024.

With Morena’s dominance a seemingly foregone conclusion — the opposition will probably be left with only a half-dozen of Mexico’s 32 states — there has been a stampede by politicians of all stripes to join or ally themselves with the party for political survival, a rush that threatens to erode its already weak internal cohesion and ideology.

Analysts say Morena could be on track to become an omnipresent “government party,” like the old Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI, that dominated Mexican politics for 70 years from 1929 to 2000 — but without the PRI’s former reputation for iron internal discipline.

Basically, Morena is now a broad tent made of anyone who López Obrador — a political pragmatist who sometimes woos opposition politicians with ambassadorships — allows in.

It marks a new stage in Mexican politics.

Read the rest at WPRI

Related: Veteran Politician Accuses AMLO of Collusion With Narcos to Consolidate Power (Mexico News Daily)

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