Mexico is beginning to fully control the election campaign for the 2024 presidential elections. Nine months before the elections, the nominations of Claudia Sheinbaum and Xóchitl Gálvez as candidates have given the starting signal for the search for the National Palace. The National Regeneration Movement (Morena) will measure its electoral weight, this time without Andrés Manuel López Obrador on the ballot. He will also face the challenge of resolving the affair with Marcelo Ebrard, who distanced himself from the party after an internal defeat, without losing the support of his supporters. While the Broad Front for Mexico, which unites almost all opposition parties, must reverse all the polls that have so far shown the president’s party as the favorite. The Citizens’ Movement, the only opposition that has distanced itself, has yet to decide who will represent it in 2024 and whether it will open the door for the former chancellor to run on its behalf.
The first days with the two candidates already defined set the pace for what was to come. Since winning the party’s election, Sheinbaum has spent hours trying to define not just his own future but that of the entire political movement. López Obrador this week handed him the baton, and with it the responsibility, of defining what happens behind closed doors in the next election cycle. His biggest problem now is Ebrard, whom he appointed to his ranks this Thursday despite the former chancellor uttering controversial words at a private meeting in front of his staff: “We will not submit to this lady.” The former foreign secretary said he would take a few days to analyze his possible scenarios and that he will make the decision with his team next Monday. Sheinbaum will influence what happens with Morena, but also with his allies, the Green Party and the Labor Party, who want to work together next year.
Meanwhile, Sheinbaum’s glory days have begun, namely those of the election campaign. The capital’s former head of government shared a video on social networks on Friday in which she thanked her followers for their support. “We are the fight for rights,” he initially said. “We are a single movement, plural but in harmony, we are a single feeling that has cried out from the bottom of our hearts: It is an honor to be with Obrador,” the message said, citing all sides. The message ends with her name and the inscription of her new position: Transformation Defense Coordinator, the euphemism they use to refer to the candidate without her being sanctioned by the National Electoral Institute (INE).
Previously, Sheinbaum shared a song by Mexican singer-songwriter Juan Gabriel. “I had never heard it before, is it unreleased? It is also called México es Todo,” he commented in his tweet. The message was picked up by his main rival. Gálvez quoted the tweet and replied: “It doesn’t seem like it, it’s Juan Gabriel!” It is an unreleased album that they released yesterday and is dedicated to the cities that have touched their hearts the most.” “I would like to use it as a jingle, but the rights are certainly very expensive.” The opposition senator was elected last Sunday by the Alliance Va por México, which includes the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) were named presidential candidates. Gálvez is already fully involved in the campaign and is measuring every step she takes. This week he took to social media to comment on López Obrador’s passing of the baton “as if he were an emperor” to Sheinbaum. “The presidency is not inherited with an imperial scepter,” he said in a video.
The fight over next year’s presidential election has monopolized everything these days between back and forth messages. That’s why some representatives of the citizens’ movement complain that the leadership is being disadvantaged because it is the only party that has not yet defined its candidate. The Orange Party announced months ago that it would stick to the legally established electoral calendar and not use tricks to elect its representatives early, as the other two groups did. This waiting is now starting to play tricks on him. For now, the next big challenge for him in his place is to define whether his future will be linked to former Chancellor Ebrard.
According to the dates set by the INE, the campaign will not officially begin until the end of November. The next few months will be crucial in defining all the other candidates who will take part in the largest elections in Mexican history. In addition to the presidency, the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies, nine governorships – including the government of Mexico City -, state congresses, hundreds of local presidencies and thousands of city councils and unions are being renewed. The rules must also specify how budgets will be managed, a discussion that is expected to be difficult because of the opposition’s claim that Sheinbaum has “all the resources” of the Mexican state. However, some of the country’s most important businessmen have risen on Gálvez’s side. The days of the election campaign have begun.
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