The plans of each candidate at the beginning of the Mexican presidential campaign are a game of contrasts. Something almost inevitable given that, at least for now, there is a first candidate as a clear favorite, a second who still trusts in the comeback and a third with hardly any real opportunities to play the match. Before the starting gun, the strategists of the three campaigns are now focused on targeting with surgical precision the strengths of their candidates and the weaknesses of their competitors. Claudia Sheinbaum, Xóchitl Gálvez and Jorge Álvarez Máynez are already touring Mexico from end to end with the goal of capturing the vote in their favor. Their strategists explain to EL PAÍS how they plan to achieve this in the first weeks of the campaign.
Tatiana Clouthier, spokesperson for Claudia Sheinbaum's campaign, states that the electoral strategy consists of visiting the country's 32 states, the main cities and the most populated municipalities in the next three months. “In pre-campaigns, Sheinbaum went around the country three times and now she is going to cover the entire territory with great commitment.” Clouthier shares that the presidential candidate will attend at least three rallies a day, including weekends, an electoral strategy extracted from the campaign manual of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who during his time as a candidate used to have up to six events a day, faithful to his belief in direct popular mobilization and in the territory. “The message will be hopeful, joyful, a message of how to strengthen what is already built and how to carry out the second part of this Fourth Transformation that has been proposed to the country,” says the spokesperson.
Faced with the calm in Morena's campaign, the pulse of the comeback is felt at Xóchitl Gálvez's headquarters, although they avoid giving importance to the polls that do not favor it. “We know that we are not going against Claudia Sheinbaum, we are going against the State apparatus,” said Senator Kenia López Rabadán, head of Gálvez's campaign office, in an interview. In the opposition, voices are multiplying that see a “state election” and that denounce the interference of President López Obrador, to promote Sheinbaum's candidacy. “We are facing an abrasive Government that uses public resources to favor its candidate,” says López Rabadán. “With all that, we are going to fight and we know we are going to win.”
For the first two weeks of the campaign, Gálvez has chosen to start with the PAN strongholds, with activities in Yucatán and Querétaro, and alternate visits to the most populated cities in the country, where the scope of his strategy and his bet against fear, insecurity and violence. “The hugging of criminals is over,” said the candidate in Zacatecas, Aguascalientes and Guanajuato, where she gave the starting signal for her campaign. “We are going to return peace and tranquility to the country,” she promised.
Sheinbaum, for his part, will hold rallies in the 16 mayoralties of Mexico City, not only to give impetus to the candidacy of Clara Brugada, who seeks to retain the Government of the capital for the ruling party, but also to ensure victory in the 22 electoral districts that constitute the capital. Mexico City is the second most important district at the national level—after the State of Mexico—and is a strategic place to win the qualified majority in Congress in the legislative elections that will converge with the presidential election.
The head of the official campaign affirms that Sheinbaum's team takes the poll projections with caution and sets itself the challenge of “going out to convince the 17% of undecided people.” Clouthier adds that Morena will not dedicate efforts to trying to convince the hardline opposition vote. “Those who are clearly committed to Xóchitl Gálvez are going to stay there. And they are mostly those who are not even willing to listen,” she says.
Gálvez's office manager explains that the opposition candidate chose Fresnillo, the city with the highest perception of insecurity in the country, as the starting point of her campaign to promote the slogan “For a Mexico without fear”, her new campaign motto and his bet to close the gap with Sheinbaum. “We are living in a bloody country, in which unfortunately it was decided to embrace criminals,” says López Rabadán about the security strategy of the current Government, before his candidate presented her security proposals and positioned herself as the “brave candidate.” and that he is going to “take the bull by the horns.”
“We are going to send a clear message: that you can live without fear, that you can live safely in Mexico and that for that we need Xóchitl Gálvez to be in the presidency of the Republic,” says López Rabadán. The fight against insecurity, the criticism against López Obrador and the attacks against Sheinbaum have been the main protagonists in the first days of the opposition campaign. First, at a rally with a high symbolic load in Fresnillo. Then, in massive events in Guanajuato and Mexico City this weekend. The message has triggered criticism from his rivals, but it has resonated with his voter base and with the public who attended the events in the States of Zacatecas, Aguascalientes and Guanajuato, where the opposition vote has historically been strong.
Security will also be one of the axes of Jorge Álvarez Máynez's campaign. Something that was clear from the place chosen for his first rally. With the election of Lagos de Moreno, one of the most insecure in the country, he sought to send two messages: that the fight against insecurity is a priority in his political proposal and his rejection of the militarization of the country. “You will see a disruptive, strong campaign that will enter the electoral scene,” defends Laura Ballesteros, recently appointed campaign coordinator of the Citizen Movement candidate. In Álvarez Máynez's team they are aware of the distance with which they start, but they bet their destiny on a supposed erosion of the two coalitions. Regarding the opposition, Ballesteros says that “people do not buy their alliance, they have 75% rejection. This represents Xóchitl [Gálvez] swimming in wet clothes.” And regarding the ruling coalition, she believes that “it seems that Sheinbaum's potential is in the coalition that represents her, but we have hardly listened to her.”
Clouthier, for his part, insists on setting times without haste or urgency. He explains that the 100 commitments read by Sheinbaum at his campaign kick-off event on Friday outline “the plan of where we are going” and advances that, later on, “Sheinbaum will present some topics of the plan in a more explicit way.” .
López Rabadán anticipated, minutes before giving the starting signal for Xóchitl Gálvez in Fresnillo, an “arduous, hard-working” election marked by violence, which has already resulted in the death of 14 politicians, even before the formal start of the Bell. “We will be facing a great challenge: not only that Mexicans go out to vote freely, but that the candidates do not lose their lives in the electoral process,” says the legislator for the National Action Party (PAN).
Allegations of dirty war
Sheinbaum's spokesperson recognizes the strength of the last opposition march that filled the Zócalo and affirms that there are dirty war campaigns, and gives as an example the DEA leaks about alleged financing of organized crime to the López Obrador movement and the online campaign. with the label of “narco-president.” “There is a reality that was in the march and there is a reality that is in the bots. They are two different things, so as not to confuse and not deny one or the other. There is a campaign from abroad in some way and paid, we don't know if here or there, of almost a million dollars a week and where Spain and Argentina are the big suppliers of this, apart from fifty other countries from which these accounts come out; That is an exercise and it has already been reported, and it must be addressed and attacked. And there are real people who were at the march and who strengthen Gálvez's vote, which is very valid and valuable and is part of the freedoms and democracy that we have in this country,” he explains.
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