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CHIHUAHUA CITY, Mexico — Chihuahua appears to have made history by electing its first female governor Sunday during pivotal nationwide midterms where Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s political alliance won 9 of the 15 gubernatorial races.
But López Obrador’s dominant hold on Congress slipped.
His Morena political party will have a maximum of 203 votes in Congress which, together with allies, could mean López Obrador will have a maximum of 290 votes as he seeks to modify the federal constitution to enact far-reaching economic changes as part of his so-called Fourth Transformation. He needs 333 votes.
This will slow down the president’s attempt to change the constitution and he will be forced to negotiate with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), National Action Party (PAN) or Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) to achieve his ambitious economic agenda. However, the president still has the necessary votes to change laws and to approve the budget.
In Chihuahua state, María Eugenia Campos Galván, known as Maru, won under the banner of PAN, which opposes Morena’s agenda. By Monday, with 83 percent of the votes counted, Campos held an 11 percentage point advantage over her nearest rival, Juan Carlos Loera, of Morena.
“Chihuahua has a female governor!” Campos Galvan said in a tweet Monday morning. “All of us who went out to vote won and in solidarity we achieved the defense of the state. Thank you all for making this dream come true.”
The electoral process was largely peaceful and as of Monday afternoon, there were no allegations of fraud.
The other state bordering Texas to hold elections was Nuevo Leon, where voters elected Samuel García, who ran as a candidate of the Citizen Movement (MC) Party. Early results show that García won with 700,352 votes, defeating Fernando Alejandro Larrazabal Breton of PAN.
García, 33, will be the youngest governor the state has ever had.
He has been notorious for his controversial comments on social media.
Many in Nuevo Leon and Chihuahua waged a fierce battle to curtail the president’s party. The battle was particularly nasty here in Chihuahua where Gov. Javier Corral Jurado refused to endorse Campos over allegations of corruption. Campos has denied such allegations.
Campos’ unofficial win was also impressive because she won without carrying Chihuahua’s electoral prize, Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso. Loera, a native of the border city, spent most of his campaign in Ciudad Juárez.
In other races in northern Mexico, López Obrador’s party made important inroads.
Baja California went for many Morena candidates. López Obrador’s party also did well in the northern state of Sonora.
For the election, 33,698 Mexicans living in 92 countries registered to vote from abroad. The majority live in the United States. Mexicans in Dallas cast the highest number of votes from outside the state of Chihuahua in that northern state’s election.