State Race Shows Rift in Mexico's PRI | LA Times

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State Race Shows Rift in Mexico's PRI
Rival factions in the party back different candidates. Outcome of today's gubernatorial election in Oaxaca has national implications.


A woman stands under political
campaign signs of PRI candidate
for governor, former Sen. Ulises
Ruiz, in Santa Cruz Xoxocotlan
outside of Oaxaca City, Mexico.
(AP)

By Chris Kraul, Times Staff Writer

OAXACA, Mexico — After a strange and violent gubernatorial campaign marked by a faked assassination attempt on the incumbent, voters in the state of Oaxaca go to the polls today in a midterm Mexican election that lays bare the divisions in the once-invincible Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Polls show Ulises Ruiz, the candidate for the PRI, as the party is known, in a dead heat with Gabino Cue, a former PRI-ista who represents an alliance of opposing parties.

The close race shows how far the PRI has fallen in this poor, rural state of 3.5 million where it has ruled since the Mexican Revolution and where its dominance once went unchallenged. The PRI machinery still controls the outlying countryside but has lost significant support here in the state capital and other urban areas.

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