With the presidential candidates almost certain, the battle for Mexico City has begun. The race was launched amid speculation and strong pressure within both the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) and the opposition Broad Front for Mexico. The polls have begun to speak and are setting the pace of the race, with some favorites at the top. But in both groups there are those who are committed to ensuring that the mechanisms for electing candidates are fair and based on a balanced basis. The next seven weeks will be crucial for the definition: Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s party is preparing the poll rules through which it plans to determine the nomination, while the opposition among the numerous forces that come under the party’s umbrella is deciding what to do next Procedure is negotiated on the front side.
A game of balance of power takes place on both sides of the board. In Morena, the official farewell flag will be raised on Monday, when party leadership will release the call for the Mexican capital and the eight governorships that will be contested in 2024. The registration days for these internal elections will be September 25th and 26th. The mayor of Iztapalapa, Clara Brugada, wants to join the capital dispute; former Security Minister Omar García Harfuch; and the governor of Morelos, Cuauhtémoc Blanco. Former presidential candidate Ricardo Monreal initially expressed interest and then dropped out after learning of the intentions of the former police chief, who was a favorite in the polls and very close to the new Fourth Transformation coordinator, Claudia Sheinbaum. “Everything is very clear. “The decision has already been made, there is no option,” Monreal said at the time.
The competition is expected to be close. Brugada, who is also very close to Sheinbaum, is one of Morena’s strong figures in the city and one of the ones who received the most votes. In 2021, when the president’s party suffered a defeat in the city’s elections, the mayor of Iztapalapa – the capital’s most populous district – achieved re-election with 58%, receiving almost 400,000 votes. Brugada is also a popular figure in the party’s ranks and enjoys the affection of López Obrador, who has accompanied him throughout much of his political career. The problem that the official faces lies in the numbers, since since she appeared in the first polls she has not managed to grow beyond a few figures.
Brugada, ahead of García Harfuch, has a much friendlier profile among those Morena voters who withdrew their support from the party in 2021. The former secretary enjoys a good image throughout the city, despite being linked to the case of the 43 Ayotzinapa students and linked to controversial figures such as Luis Cárdenas Palomino or Genaro García Luna. García Harfuch has denied being close to them and also having played a role in the disappearance of the Normalists or in the construction of historical truth. The police officer currently leads all the preferences, although he faces a quota problem: Morena must accommodate his candidacies in the nine entities while maintaining gender parity. A measure that works in favor of Brugada, the only woman who has so far raised her hand for Mexico City.
There are many more names in circulation in the opposition, but only a few manage to position themselves in the polls. The person who has measured the best in recent months has been the mayor of Benito Juárez, Santiago Taboada. This has raised concerns among other interested parties in the front, who fear that the election will end up being a coincidence. The rules governing what the selection process will look like are still unclear in the opposition. The leaders of the three parties that unite Va por México – the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) – met this week and announced they would wait to see the city’s electoral calendar to be able to comply with the requirement that it can only name candidates in November.
Santiago Taboada in Mexico City, September 3rd. Inaki Malvido
“Communication between the three leaderships has remained constant and fluid, so we continue to work on developing the method of selecting the candidacy for the head of government and the others,” said the statement they issued. Some sources from the front have told this newspaper that the lack of definition has caused discomfort among some members of the Union of Mayors of Mexico City, especially Lía Limón (PAN) of Álvaro Obregón and Adrián Rubalcava (PRI) of Cuajimalpa. Both are seeking the opposition candidacy, but fear they will end up voting for Taboada as the person who performs best in the polls. Rubalcava demanded in the media this week that the selection method should be democratic.
Andrés Atayde, president of the PAN in Mexico City, told this newspaper that it maintains open communication with all participants and said that the rules of the selection method have not yet been determined. In addition to Taboada, those who raised their hands include the mayor of Cuauhtémoc, Sandra Cuevas; Senator Kenya López Rabadán (PAN); Deputy Luis Espinosa Cházaro (PRD); and Mariana Moguel, the daughter of Rosario Robles, former government secretary to Enrique Peña Nieto, who was detained at the start of this six-year term and released a year ago for lack of evidence.
In opposition, it will be difficult to challenge Taboada’s place, which is supported by his deputy Jorge Romero. This group of the capital’s PAN has managed to retain the mayoralty of Benito Juárez for more than two decades and to establish itself as a reference in the conservative formation. Some party sources estimate that the money donated by this mayor’s office in election years is equivalent to what an entire state donates. So the fight must be against this PAN branch. With the punishment of Morena in the 2021 elections as a precedent, the capital is considered one of the most contentious races for the next elections. The armed forces must measure beyond names how much weight the vote in favor of the president will have and how much weight the punitive vote will have.
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