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Claudia Sheinbaum (c), candidate for the presidency of Mexico from the MORENA party, is visiting the facilities of the Tlatelolco Cultural Center in Mexico City to sign the National Commitment for Peace, organized by the Society of Jesus in Mexico and the Mexican Episcopate Conference, on March 11, 2024.
Mexico’s presidential front-runner and the politics of violent crime
In June 2022, a man fleeing a drug gang took refuge inside a church in a remote region of northern Mexico. Armed men followed him into the church, killed him, and murdered two Jesuit priests who tried to intervene.
That event has since strained relations between the Catholic Church and President Andres Manuel López Obrador, whom church leaders blame for failing to contain the country’s still-high rates of violent crime.
López Obrador’s presidency will end – he’s term-limited – later this year following an election to choose his successor. The popular leader has endorsed former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum of his Morena party, and she is the heavy favorite in June’s election.
This week, all three presidential candidates signed a document entitled “Commitment for Peace,” drafted by Mexico’s Roman Catholic leadership, that calls for new efforts to lower the country’s violent crime rate. But Sheinbaum, beating back implicit criticism of López Obrador’s failure on the issue, noted that she disagreed with the church’s claim that Mexico suffers a “profound crisis of violence.”
López Obrador’s security minister reported in January that the country’s homicide rate fell 10.8% in 2023, but Mexico's 29,675 murders last year still averaged 81 per day. The challenge of violent crime, and the delicate political dance around it, will continue.Outgoing Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum speaks as she registers as a for the ruling MORENA party's 2024 presidential election primary.
Is she Mexico’s next president?
A year from now, Claudia Sheinbaum is likely to be Mexico's next president. That’s partly because she’s widely considered the preferred choice of the still-remarkably popular current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has a 59% approval rating after four years in office and has unified leadership within his Morena party.
But it’s also because Sheinbaum is an undeniably impressive candidate who’s built a solid reputation as the leftist mayor of Mexico City. Like López Obrador, she pledges to “shrink the great inequalities” that have defined Mexican society throughout its history.
First, she must fend off challenges from within Morena from Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard and Interior Secretary Adán Augusto López, but her commanding polling lead over both men and implied support from (officially neutral) López Obrador signal that’s likely to happen.
Then, she’ll have to defeat a unity opposition candidate, but given how little traction opposition parties have established against Morena, she’ll likely enter the race next year as a clear favorite.
If she wins next July, she’ll be the first female and first Jewish president in Mexico’s history. She’ll also be the first physicist. Herein lies the first of the two important differences between Sheinbaum and López Obrador, a president who was infamously cavalier about the public health risks posed by COVID and who has relied heavily on state-owned oil company PEMEX to help realize his populist vision for a more economically equitable Mexico.
In Mexico City, Sheinbaum took a much more science-based approach to the pandemic, with masks and social distancing as part of her virus management strategy. As for fossil fuels, Sheinbaum, who holds a Ph.D. in engineering, has worked on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Prize. That’s the foundation of her commitment to moving Mexico toward environmental sustainability.
The other difference is all about politics. Love him or hate him, López Obrador is a brilliant politician with a common touch. He knows how to speak over the heads of political elites to mobilize support among working-class voters.
Does Sheinbaum share that talent? If she wins in 2024, that will be the true test of her ability to create a presidency unlike any Mexico has seen before.Mario Delgado, president of Mexico's ruling Morena party, during a press conference to unveil the four presidential candidates in Mexico City.
AMLO wants a popular successor
Mexico's ruling Morena Party on Sunday decided to pick its 2024 presidential nominee in a unique way.
Instead of voting directly for the four declared candidates to succeed term-limited President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, aka AMLO, Morena members will weigh in via five polls — one internal survey and four private ones picked by each aspirant — to be conducted over the summer. Moreover, all candidates must resign their posts by Friday in order to enter the race, which will have no debates or allow endorsements by sitting officials.
Why? To avoid infighting and anyone manipulating surveys or using a government position to gain an unfair advantage.
But perhaps more importantly, this selection process smacks of overcompensation since after five years in power, Morena remains little more than a political vehicle for AMLO’s popularity. Although the party insists that the president won't handpick his successor, any hint of showing a preference for, say, Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, will be perceived as a de facto nod from the big boss that’ll matter more than any poll.
The winner will be announced on Sept. 6.
Delfina Gomez, candidate for governor of the State of Mexico for the Morena party, celebrates after preliminary election results are announced in Toluca.
AMLO's party wins big Mexican state, looking good for 2024
Mexico's ruling Morena Party on Sunday won a bellwether election in the State of Mexico. This is good news for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, aka AMLO.
For one thing, Mexico is the country's most populous state and has outsize weight in national politics as it hugs the federal capital, Mexico City, and its diverse composition signals wider voter trends. For another, the left-wing Morena defeated the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which had ruled the state for almost 100 years and is languishing in the political doldrums under AMLO.
But election night also delivered a warning for the president and his party: In a separate vote, the PRI walloped Morena in Coahuila. Although this border state is much smaller than the State of Mexico, Morena lost because party infighting resulted in the ruling coalition running three rival candidates, which siphoned key support from Morena's pick.
"AMLO will confirm that his political calculations continue to be spot-on as he managed to transfer his popularity to his party's candidate," says Eurasia Group analyst Matías Gómez Léautaud.
This is crucial for Morena to stay in power 13 months out from the presidential election since AMLO is limited to one term. It's an open secret that his preferred successor is Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, now the presumptive frontrunner despite some internal opposition. For Gómez Léautaud, "AMLO's overbearing presence and control will impede any schisms within the party to translate into rival candidacies from disaffected candidates."