Claudia Sheinbaum, 61, Mexico's first female chief executive, was elected in a landslide Sunday. Her party now controls two-thirds of the national congress.
MEXICO CITY — Texas and other U.S. border states have much at stake in how Claudia Sheinbaum , newly elected as Mexico's first woman president in a landslide, uses her mandate. Sheinbaum, 61, took nearly 60 percent of votes in Sunday’s three-way contest.
The ruling Morena party will control two thirds of both chambers of the national congress and 24 of Mexico 32 governorships. What Sheinbaum does with that majority will define Mexico’s economic policy, including the treatment of private investment in key sectors such as energy. RELATED: Can new Mexican president break grip of criminal gangs? It will also determine the future of the government's so-far-lackluster efforts to curb the country’s militarized criminal gangs and deal with the hundreds of thousands of migrants who pass through Mexico on their way to the U.S. every year. Sheinbaum's patron, incumbent Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will hand over power in four months. By law, he could not seek a second term as president. Mexico last year overtook China as the main U.S. trading partner. Some $800 billion in goods crosses the border every year, and trade between the two countries is expected to jump as manufacturing returns to North America amid growing tension between the U.S. and China. Border states are poised to reap the benefits. “Texas is the destination, origin and transit point of two-thirds of binational trade with Mexico,” said Tony Payan, director of the Center for the U.S. and Mexico at Rice University's Baker Institute. “The U.S.-Mexico relationship runs through Texas, and the Mexican community in Texas is enormous — Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso. We’re talking a very intense relationship.' Payan, who is also a professor of social sciences at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, added: “I hope the next administration really, really understands that Washington is not everything. That the state capitals, whether it's Sacramento in California or Phoenix in Arizona or Austin in Texas, are the places of power for Mexico City.” The Morena party's economic and social program — called the Fourth Transformation, or 4T — is aimed at improving the lot of Mexico’s poor and working class. Under López Obrador, the minimum wage has doubled, labor unions have gained freedom and needed cash has been delivered to the elderly and others of Mexico’s neediest. The export-fueled economy has proved resilient: Mexico's “super peso” has gained 23 percent against the U.S. dollar since 2018. But some analysts say López Obrador's anti-capital rhetoric has kept some private investment money off the table. “As supply chains move out of China, Mexico is one of the best-positioned countries in the world to take advantage of this once-in-a-generation opportunity,” said Shannon O’Neil, a Mexico expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and author of 'The Globalization Myth,' which argues that regional economies such as North America’s will become dominant. “The next government needs to double down on infrastructure, education, public safety, and clean energy to attract the hundreds of billions of dollars of investment up for grabs,” O’Neil said of Sheinbaum's administration. The United States accounts for two thirds of Mexico's foreign trade, and economic ties reach deep into the U.S. industrial heartland. With analysts citing the need for dramatic improvement in Mexico's electrical grid, highways and other infrastructure, Sheinbaum sought to assure investors in her victory speech that she is open to working with them. “We will respect entrepreneurial freedom and will honestly promote and facilitate both national and foreign private investment that fosters social well-being and regional development, always ensuring respect for the environment,' said Sheinbaum, an environmental scientist and former mayor of Mexico City. The energy sector will present a key test. A decade ago, the government opened energy industries to Mexican and foreign investment, but López Obrador squelched the initiative after taking office in 2018. “The commitment to change course on the energy sector was clear with both candidates, yet the political baggage Sheinbaum carries will make it harder for her to move quickly,” said José Antonio Aguilar, a Mexican businessman who develops wind farms to generate renewable energy. Sheinbaum's resounding victory over Xóchitl Gálvez, who led a coalition of three opposition parties, could portend the return of one-party rule, which characterized Mexico’s political system for nearly all of the past century. Gálvez’s conservative National Action Party ushered in democracy in Mexico when it won the 2000 presidential election and held the office for 12 years. The institutional Revolutionary Party had ruled Mexico as a one-party state for most of the 20th Century. The National Action Party's mediocre governing record and the PRI’s disastrous return to the presidency in 2012 paved the way for Morena’s hold on power. Critics fear that Morena’s imposing political majority could enable Sheinbaum and López Obrador to weaken institutions painstakingly created in the 1990s to safeguard democracy and limit presidential power. López Obrador sent to Congress in early February a number of proposals to alter Mexico’s constitution. They include limiting the power of the autonomous National Elections Institute, which oversees federal elections and direct election of judges, including members of the Supreme Court. The proposals would also eliminate autonomous agencies that regulate energy, telecommunications and other industries where Lopez Obrador has sought to limit private investment in favor of state control. Morena lacked the votes to secure a majority during the last Congress. But Sheinbaum ran her campaign in part on a promise to make López Obrador's constitutional changes a reality. Congress reconvenes Sept. 1 with Morena in a strong position. In winning 58% of the vote, Sheinbaum bested by 5 percentage points López Obrador's margin of victory in a four-way race six years ago. Gálvez’s showing Sunday fell far short of what had been predicted by opinion polls, including a nationwide survey commissioned by Puente News Collaborative, an El Paso-based nonprofit that reports on Mexico and the borderlands. “Claudia, Morena just swept,” said Francisco Olivarez, who sells newspapers on a street corner in Mexico City. “Not even close.” While the vote seemed certain to cement López Obrador’s political legacy, some of his policies haven’t delivered the promised results. Violence remains rampant –— with 30,000 murders per year on his watch – as criminal gangs battle one another and security forces. The gangs, long financed by the smuggling of narcotics to the U.S., now rely on migrant trafficking, extortion and other rackets that have a greater impact on Mexican communities. Lopez Obrador’s doubling down on support of the bankrupt national oil company, Pemex, flies in the face of worldwide efforts to curb carbon output to mitigate the effects of climate change. And his expensive bets on public works, including a new, underutilized Mexico City airport and a tourist train encircling the Yucatan Peninsula, have been derided as unprofitable vanity projects. When she claimed victory just before midnight Sunday, Sheinbaum sought to calm her critics. “We envision a plural, diverse, and democratic Mexico,” she said. “We understand that dissent is part of democracy, and although the majority of the people supported our project, our duty is and always will be to look after each and every Mexican without distinction.'
National Elections Institute Baker Institute Congress Pemex Rice University Council On Foreign Relations Autonomous University Of Ciudad Juarez National Action Party Revolutionary Party PRI Supreme Court Claudia Sheinbaum Tony Payan Morena Andrés Manuel López Obrador José Antonio Aguilar Francisco Olivarez Shannon O'neil Claudia Texas Mexican U.S. MEXICO CITY China North America El Paso Morena Austin Washington San Antonio New York Dallas Houston Arizona Phoenix California Sacramento Yucatan Peninsula Fourth Transformation Xóchitl Gálvez The Globalization Myth
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