Claudia Sheinbaum visits northern Mexico waving a flag with a message of economic calm for the region's middle class. The presidential candidate of Morena, the PVEM and PT has scheduled this week, from Wednesday to Sunday, an intense campaign for Nuevo León, Durango and Coahuila, historically complicated states for the leftist movement. Coahuila alone has been governed by the PRI for almost a century, without interruptions, and last year it reaffirmed its support for the oldest party in Mexico, by electing Manuel Jiménez to the Executive. In the same century, in Durango there was only one six-year alternation, from 2016 to 2022, when a PAN member governed, only for a PRI leader, Esteban Villegas, to be elected again. Nuevo León, a strong business bastion, has shown more signs of alternation in the last two decades between the PRI and the PAN, and is currently governed by a politician who emerged from the Citizen Movement (MC), Samuel García.
Sheinbaum's tour also includes a visit to Tamaulipas, another state traditionally hostile to the left, at least until the 2022 election, when Morena took the governorship from the PAN, led by Américo Villarreal as candidate. In that border State, the candidate spoke this Tuesday about continuing the government aid established by the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, but she also promised to support businessmen and investors. “So that all the businessmen in this very important border area know: we are going to maintain all the support that the president has given regarding lower taxes, equality in the price of fuel between the United States and Mexico, we are going to maintain that support to continue promoting development and investments in Tamaulipas,” he said in Reynosa, the capital.
The official coalition candidate later said from Matamoros that Morena's philosophy is that there be an equitable distribution of resources in society, without attacking private property. Sheinbaum explained that the Obrero slogan of “For the good of all, the poor first” includes “those at the top” and the middle class in the equation. Sheinbaum exemplified that López Obrador's economic management allowed the reduction of inequalities in favor of the poorest and also brought growth for the country. “Not only have we helped those who have the least, reducing poverty and inequalities, but the entire country is doing well. The currency, our peso, is the most appreciated currency of all in the world against the dollar. Who was going to say it? Today there is more foreign investment in our country than in all of history. Today there is economic growth, there is a decrease in poverty and inequalities. That is, it is not only because of humanism, but because it works,” she noted.
Sheinbaum's tour of Nuevo León includes a visit to seven municipalities and a specific meeting with businessmen, which demonstrates the candidate's emphasis on that State. The leader of Morena, Mario Delgado, who is also coordinator of the presidential campaign, said that the tour of that State governed by MC aims to “strengthen the presence” of Sheinbaum and promote its economic offer, which contemplates annual growth. at 3% and controlled debt. “They always said that Morena does not enter Nuevo León because Morena does not support businessmen. Well, precisely, with the economic results that our president currently has and the proposal that she is making in economic matters, there is a lot to tell the people in Nuevo León: that the economy is better than when the neoliberal governments of the PRI and the PAN were in place. . And that is the presence that will strengthen our candidate, that is the objective of her presence this weekend in Nuevo León,” Delgado stated.
In the 2018 presidential elections, López Obrador won an overwhelming vote at the national level. In all the states of Mexico, except in Guanajuato, a PAN bastion, the Morena leader's candidacy triumphed. However, the details of the voting by deputies and senators show that in some States there was cross-voting, that is, the voters supported López Obrador and at the same time gave their vote to Congressional candidates of other political options. This voting trend was repeated with greater force in the 2021 midterm elections, when the ruling bloc (Morena, PVEM and PT) lost the majority it had won in Congress three years ago. In the next election in June, Morena tries to conjure the differentiated vote for the sake of the so-called “plan C”, an electoral strategy instructed by López Obrador and Sheinbaum with which the ruling coalition seeks to win once and for all the qualified majority in Congress. —two thirds—, which would allow him to approve reforms to the Constitution without having to negotiate with the opposition.
This strategy must consider the profile of the voter of Coahuila, Nuevo León and Durango. Coahuila has been a kind of dam for the Morenoist locomotive advance. In the 2023 state elections, the alliance of the PRI, PAN and PRD won by two to one in votes over Morena in the governorship, with Manuel Jiménez as standard bearer. In the state Congress, the PRI coalition won two-thirds of the seats. In Durango, in the 2022 local elections, the PRI-PAN-PRD alliance removed José Rosas Aispuro, a PAN member distanced from his party leadership, from the government and brought a PRI politician, Esteban Villegas, to the governorship. In the mayoralties, which were also at stake in that election, the PRI coalition won the majority. In Nuevo León, in the 2021 elections for the Executive, Morena had proposed a candidate with a high probability of victory, according to the polls, Clara Luz Flores, but a scandal of her alleged links with the NXIVM sect derailed her aspirations, which benefited the MC standard bearer, Samuel García.
The recent incorporation of the legendary leftist leader Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas to Sheinbaum's campaign is, precisely, a gesture to the enlightened and progressive middle class. Cárdenas—son of President Lázaro Cárdenas and founder of the PRD—had a gesture of deference for Sheinbaum that he has not had for López Obrador, an old ally from whom he distanced himself in his position on economic management. The photo that showed the Morena candidate among the heirs of the Cardenista dynasty while they made an honor guard for the remains of the patriarch captured several newspaper headlines. Sheinbaum thus seeks to reinforce an image of moderation, while López Obrador, at the end of his six-year term, assumes positions of political radicalism. The contrast between the presidential candidate and her mentor has occurred almost naturally.
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