06/27/2024
On June 2nd, Mexico held a massive election. The Presidency was up for grabs, as well as every single seat in the Congress, some governorships, the mayorship of Mexico City, and state and local offices.
The winner of the presidency was Claudia Sheinbaum, scheduled to take office on October 1st as Mexico’s first woman president and first Jewish president (half Ashkenazi, half Sephardi). Sheinbaum is a protégée of current president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO).
I have been writing about the election at my new Mexico News Report website. I invite you to read my website here; you can also follow on Twitter/X here.
The Astonishing Growth and Power of Mexico’s MORENA Partyhttps://t.co/lglvwHR4E0
— Mexico News Report (@MexicoReport) June 23, 2024
Sheinbaum ran as candidate of the MORENA party and its two allies, the Green Party and the Labor Party (originally founded by Mexican Maoists).
The MORENA/Labor/Green coalition did well in Congress. In the Chamber of Deputies (lower house) the coalition has a supermajority; in the Senate it lacks two votes for a supermajority. A supermajority is necessary to amend the Mexican Constitution.
Saul Hernandez, a reporter for Milenio, did some good journalistic work and demonstrated a link between the level of public assistance provided by the MORENA government and the vote for Sheinbaum. That is, the more welfare in a state, the higher the percentage who voted for MORENA’s Sheinbaum. A Financiero exit poll also bore that out. Well, it’s not surprising. Since the ancient Romans, governments have used welfare to gain political support.
This election was also a violent one, mostly affecting local candidates. There were 38 candidates assassinated and 102 total political assassinations of some kind, plus other forms of violence. About half of this violence occurred in 5 southern states of Mexico.
What is astonishing about AMLO’s MORENA party is that it only became a political party 10 years ago, and it now dominates Mexican politics. The three traditional parties (PAN, PRI, and PRD) have been greatly diminished and actually ran as a coalition in this election.
As always with foreign elections, it is customary to speculate about how the new leader will do and how the new leader will get along with the United States.
That’s all very interesting, but for Americans, it’s more important to ask what kind of policies the U.S. president will have. And what do you know, we have an election ourselves in November!
Note that current president AMLO got along very well with Donald Trump.
On June 26, I was interviewed by Silvio Canto, Jr. We discussed the election and transition in Mexico, and also my recent road trip in the western U.S., which was quite enjoyable. We visited 10 states and one Canadian province.
You can watch the interview here or just listen here.
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