Left-Wing Political Party Ushers in New Electoral Era for Mexico
In a resounding rejection of the status quo in Mexican politics and society, a political alliance of left-wing and conservative right-wing political parties won the 2018 presidential election in Mexico and is dominating the outcomes of other Mexican federal and local elections, including those in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico.
Former Mexico City mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected president of Mexico as the first third-party political candidate to ascend to the office. López Obrador founded the National Regeneration Movement, also known as Morena, as a national democratic “neoliberal” political movement opposed to the authoritarianism of the Mexican government.
Morena joined with the leftist Labor Party (PT) and the conservative right-wing Social Encounter Party (PES) in a coalition that represents a challenge to the entrenched political structure in Mexico, and López Obrador received broad popular support as he campaigned against rampant levels of crime, corruption, economic injustices and violence in that country.
With more than 50 percent of votes counted on the day after the election, candidates representing the Morena Alliance lead in every election for Sonoran candidates – federal senators, federal deputies and mayors (alcaldes). Read more about the early 2018 Sonoran dominance of the Morena coalition.
Nogales Mayor
In Nogales, with more than 65 percent of votes counted, local businessman, civic leader and Morena Alliance candidate Jesús Antonio Pujol Irastorza leads balloting with 33 percent of the votes counted, followed by Jorge Octavio Freig Carrillo, polling with 28.5 percent of the vote. Freig Carrillo represents a political alliance between the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the Green Ecological Party (PVEM) and the liberal New Alliance Party (PANAL).
The other two Nogales mayoral candidates are Marco Antonio Valenzuela Herrera (commonly referred to as “Maval”) of the Citizen’s Movement (MC) party, with 23.5 percent of the vote, and current Nogales mayor David Cuauhtémoc “Temo” Galindo Delgado, a candidate for an alliance between the National Action Party (PAN) and the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) who is running a distant fourth with 13 percent of the vote.
Nogales District 2 Federal Deputy
With more than 51 percent of votes counted, Morena alliance candidate and local sports celebrity Ana Gabriela Guevara Espinoza is garnering 45 percent of the votes cast, a comfortable lead over PRI alliance candidate Humberto Jesús Robles Pompa, who received 28 percent of the vote and PAN alliance candidate Angélica Miranda Molina, who has received 27 percent of the votes cast.
The election for diputado federal appears to be a lock, although the mayoral winner is still too close to call. Stay tuned for updates after the final ballot counts.
