MEXICO'S RULING PARTY FACES MORE HURDLES TO MAINTAIN POWER
May 26, 12:03 AM EDT
BY CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ECATEPEC, Mexico (AP) -- At a recent political rally in this crime-ridden Mexico City suburb, next year's presidential election was discussed as much as the upcoming June 4 vote for governor in the country's most populous state.
The banner stretched across the stage carried the face of Delfina Gomez, a teacher-turned-politician with the leftist Morena party seeking the Mexico state governorship, and that of her party's president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a charismatic early favorite for a third run for Mexico's presidency.
One year before Mexicans pick their new top leader, the impending gubernatorial election in Mexico state is seen as a referendum on the government of Enrique Pena Nieto, who was governor here before becoming president five years ago as the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI.
A PRI win here could stanch the bleeding after the party's loss last year of four governorships it had always held. Mexico state has long been a key source of the PRI's so-called "voto duro," or hard vote - voters it can count on year after year, most of them from a lower socio-economic status, less educated and many older than 50, said Ivonne Acuna, a professor in Iberoamerican University's social and political sciences department.
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