Contrary to what President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had calculated when imposing Clara Brugada and Rocío Nahle in the candidacies for the governments of Mexico City and Veracruzthings are going badly and the risk of them losing is worrying in the National Palace as the perception is spreading within Morena that defeat is coming. Accusations of corruption and internal conflicts between candidates have accelerated internal decomposition, contaminating campaigns for Congress, the Senate, and municipal presidencies.
What is happening in the ruling party has not been seen since Morena burst onto the national stage in 2015, not even in the 2021 midterm elections, when it suffered a major defeat in Mexico City. The environment that accompanies the last part of the campaigns is one of conflict. Even, as a form of damage control, Morena's national leader, Mario Delgado, has been complaining at the National Palace that the governor of Sonora, Alfonso Durazo, president of the party's Political Council, is primarily responsible for the electoral weakness. in many of the campaigns.
The greatest concern is in the Mexico City and Veracruz, where the president is actively intervening. The yellow traffic lights began to turn on approximately a month and a half ago in the National Palace, when the first cash cut was made on the electoral trends in both entities and it was concluded that if nothing urgent was done about it, the possibility of losing the governorships was great. Three weeks ago, tasks were reassigned to Marcelo Ebrard and Ricardo Monreal to work in Mexico City, and the governor of Veracruz, Cuitláhuac García, was responsible for operating Nahle's election. Money was not a problem, and public resources began to be injected into the candidates' campaigns.
Since then, the route of Brugada and Nahle has been descending.
Veracruz is the biggest red spot. García failed in the electoral operation, showing one more mistake by López Obrador in trusting a political opportunist with no experience or electoral talent. The governor's failures were coupled with growing allegations of possible acts of corruption by Nahle. One, presented to the Specialized Prosecutor's Office for the Fight against Corruption by the Veracruz businessman, Arturo Castagné Couturier, has to do with the alleged irregular or illegal purchase of properties owned by Nahle, when she was Secretary of Energy, and her husband José Luis Peña. Peña, who worked at the Pajaritos petrochemical plant, in Coatzacoalcos, and who for years has been attributed, without documentable evidence, acts of corruption. Another, published by veteran journalist Édgar Hernández on the Línea Caliente portal, about alleged deposits in tax havens for about 100 million pesos during the time he was in López Obrador's cabinet. Nahle has denied everything, but at her word they have shown her documentation in both cases.
Nahle has been having problems since López Obrador insisted on making her a candidate because she was not born in Veracruz but in Zacatecas, so legal tricks had to be done so that she could be registered. Her management at the head of Energy is memorable for her incompetence in that field – an energy and public service expert says that she is the worst civil servant he has ever met due to her ignorance and ideologization -, and the despotic way with which she treats the people, including members of the cabinet when he was part of the government.
The candidate has many negatives and enemies, and it does not seem that the surprises around her have ended. Hernández anticipated that information would come from her about an alleged apartment of hers in New York, and there are some audios that implicate her in alleged corruption in Dos Bocas, with people linked to the president's children.
In Mexico City, despite the recent allegations of corruption made by opposition candidate Santiago Taboada in the second debate this Sunday, Brugada is not tainted like Nahle is. But her problems are not minor, and they began since López Obrador imposed her over Sheinbaum's candidate, Omar García Harfuch, who had clearly defeated her in the polls. The atrabiliary way in which the president made her a candidate caused a fracture in Morena's clientele and with Sheinbaum.
López Obrador demanded that Delgado resolve the conflict between them, but he has not been able to. In fact, the clashes between their campaign teams are becoming more and more evident and Sheinbaum's annoyance is not limited only to the fact that she has been forced to accept that García Harfuch was demoted, but also because she considers that she does not guarantee Morena's victory because she considers who does not have the stature to govern the city. The problem is not limited to her lawsuit. There are also political and union leaders who are considering not operating in favor of Brigada because if the endorsements are made explicit, they do not want to be compromised with Taboada, given the real possibility of him winning.
In Mexico City and Veracruz, the electoral trends provided to the president by his reliable personal polling team show his candidates on the decline, and their opponents Taboada and the PRI member José Yunes, on the rise. But López Obrador did not sit with his arms crossed when he was given the results and has been working and putting pressure on the Morena militancy to avoid defeats in two of the entities with the greatest electoral weight and that have the potential to influence the presidential election. if they were lost.
A defeat in Mexico City could not be attributed to Sheinbaum. On the contrary; would prove that his push for Harfuch, under the assumption that he would win votes that Brugada would not, was correct. The loser, as in Veracruz, would be López Obrador, which should worry the opposition because the enemy in front of them is the president, willing to do whatever is necessary, legal or not, to win.
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