This has been the most violent election campaign in Mexico in living memory. Now that voting day has arrived, however, many Mexicans see it as an opportunity to remove the government that has led the country to this point.<doc-sep>MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has forged a coalition of voters of all stripes in a bid to win the presidency at the third time of asking and now, with victory within his grasp, he must work out how to hold it together. FILE PHOTO: Leftist front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) greets supporters during a campaign rally in Uruapan, in Michoacan state, Mexico, June 8, 2018. REUTERS/Alan Ortega/File Photo The 64-year-old former mayor of Mexico City, whom opinion polls give a wide lead over rivals before the July 1 election, will have to balance the interests of leftist economic nationalists, social liberals and religious conservatives. Aside from loyalty to AMLO himself, as Lopez Obrador is commonly known, the broad group is united by little more than opposition to the status quo and to U.S. President Donald Trump. Lopez Obrador has made a career of denouncing corruption, electoral fraud and economic mismanagement by the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the center-right National Action Party (PAN), which governed from 2000 to 2012. Yet, a week on Sunday, dozens of former politicians for the two parties will line up alongside him, amplifying his appeal to a wide swathe of the electorate but also creating a divergent platform with no clear center of political equilibrium. “The cohesive element in this whole mix of elements and ways of thinking is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador,” said Abraham Gonzalez, a deputy interior minister in the last PAN government who now supports Lopez Obrador. “So his actions, his ability to find common points of agreement, are crucial.” So far Lopez Obrador has kept a lid on potential conflict within his alliance by adopting ambiguous stances on contentious issues such as abortion, gay marriage and economic liberalization. Still, Mexico’s next president will face a more challenging start than his predecessors. Murders are at record levels, the peso currency is languishing close to historic lows against the dollar and a trade war has been brewing with Trump. However, the U.S. president could prove useful. If Trump stays hostile, insisting Mexico will pay for his planned border wall and seeking to repatriate jobs to the United States, it could help Lopez Obrador paper over divisions on how to move Mexico forward. “If Trump continues on the path he is on, he could easily help Lopez Obrador bring the country closer together,” said Andres Rozental, a former deputy foreign minister. ‘STRICTLY ELECTORAL’ Opinion polls suggest Lopez Obrador could win twice as many votes as his nearest challenger, former PAN leader Ricardo Anaya, who is battling for second place with ex-finance minister Jose Antonio Meade, the PRI candidate. After his defeat in 2012, Lopez Obrador jettisoned the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and formed the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), which is on track to become the biggest force in Congress after the election. Built around Lopez Obrador, MORENA entered an electoral pact with the smaller leftist Labor Party (PT) and the conservative, religious Social Encounter Party (PES). The latter tie-up met with vocal resistance from a number of Lopez Obrador’s traditional supporters on the left, uneasy about allying with the staunchly anti-abortion PES. Aaron Lara, a senior PES official, said the alliance was “strictly electoral” and conceded his party was quite likely to vote differently to MORENA in future “because our convictions are different from theirs”. Excluding votes with cross-party backing, the PES nearly always voted with the PRI and against MORENA until the alliance was announced in December 2017, lower house records show. After that, voting became more aligned but differences persisted. PRI ‘INVASION’ The electoral partnerships and drift of former PRI and PAN members into MORENA have stirred protests by party faithful. In the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas, long a bastion of the PRI and PAN, many MORENA candidates have links to the two traditionally dominant parties. The mayoral candidate for Reynosa, Tamaulipas’ biggest city, is a former PAN member of the state congress and brother-in-law to the PAN governor. MORENA’s contenders for the cities of Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros and Tampico are all ex-PRI. Omar Salomon, a MORENA activist in Ciudad Mante in southern Tamaulipas, said “imposition” of candidates had gone too far and MORENA was at risk of being overrun by opportunists. “We’ve been invaded by PRI people,” he said, branding the PES a “far right” party. Salomon said he would vote for Lopez Obrador, but not MORENA’s local candidate for Congress, or for mayor of Ciudad Mante. Lopez Obrador accused the PAN of rigging the vote to rob him of the presidency in 2006, yet his supporters now include the man who was then chairman of the party, and his successor. He also has the backing of a former PRI interior minister who oversaw the 1988 election of President Carlos Salinas, a man he often depicts as the arch-villain of Mexican politics. Like many MORENA members, including Lopez Obrador, Salomon opposed outgoing President Enrique Pena Nieto’s energy reform, which opened the oil and gas industry to private capital. However, Alfonso Romo, one of Lopez Obrador’s top economic advisers, said the candidate will not overturn the reform, and the new intake of MORENA lawmakers is set to feature former PRI and PAN legislators who voted for the historic measure.<doc-sep>MEXICO CITY — Two mayoral candidates in two different Mexican towns have been killed in less than 24 hours, marking a total of at least 18 candidates killed so far in campaigns leading up to the July 1 elections. An independent mayoral candidate was gunned down in the conflict-ridden rural town of Aguililla in the western state of Michoacan on Wednesday. Michoacan Gov. Silvano Aureoles vowed to catch those responsible for killing candidate Omar Gomez Lucatero. Aguililla is an extensive but sparsely populated mountain township where drug gangs and vigilantes have been active. And early Thursday, the mayoral candidate for the leftist Democratic Revolution Party was killed in Ocampo, also in Michoacan. Mexican soldiers guard the funeral of Ocampo municipality Mayor and candidate for the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), Fernando Angeles, in Ocampo, Michoacan State, Mexico, on June 21, 2018. Raul Tinoco / AFP - Getty Images His party said issued a statement saying that Fernando Angeles Juarez was assassinated, and called on the government to provide protection for people running in the July 1 elections. Ocampo is a rural township about 95 miles (150 kilometers) west of Mexico City best known for the Monarch butterfly wintering grounds that occupy part of the mountainous municipality. It also been plagued by illegal logging and gangs. Almost all of the 18 candidates killed across the country so far have been running for local posts in the July 1 elections, which will also decide the presidency, governorships and Congress. Other politicians who were considering a run have been killed before they could even register as candidates. The killings have particularly hit states like Michoacan, Guerrero and Oaxaca. Mexican security analyst Alejandro Hope said that in part, the level of violence against candidates can be explained by “simple mathematics:” There are far more elections being held simultaneously than ever before in Mexico. With more than 3,400 local, state and federal posts at stake, there are more than 15,000 candidates hitting the campaign trail. “Secondly, this speaks to the changes in criminal groups,” Hope said, noting that drug cartels have expanded into extortion, fuel theft and other crimes. “With the evolution of crime, it becomes much more important to gain control over territory, over local governments.” In crimes like fuel theft, for example, local police can be valuable allies to act as look outs or cover up for illegal pipeline taps and illicit fuel warehouses. And some gangs have even taken to extorting money from local governments by forcing them to sign inflated public works contracts. Those concerns could lead the gangs to kill a candidate who rivals their favorite, or to kill candidates who refuse their demands. Finally, Hope noted, “there has been a breakdown in the management of disputes,” largely in rural areas, where turf wars between rival gangs have heated up, even as the government has become over-extended and less able to intervene. FOLLOW NBC LATINO ON FACEBOOK, TWITTER AND INSTAGRAM.<doc-sep>MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has consolidated his commanding lead over rivals in the race to become Mexico’s next president with just a week to go, a voter survey by polling firm Consulta Mitofsky showed on Sunday. FILE PHOTO: Mexico's presidential front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) greets supporters in Oaxaca, Mexico June 16, 2018. REUTERS/Jorge Luis Plata The opinion poll showed Lopez Obrador, a former mayor of Mexico City, with support of 37.7 percent of voters, up 0.5 percentage points from a survey earlier this month. Backing for his closest rival, Ricardo Anaya, who fronts a right-left coalition, inched down to 20.0 percent from 20.3 percent in the previous month, according to the nationwide poll of 1,000 voters from June 16-19. Jose Antonio Meade, candidate of the ruling centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), rose to 17.7 percent from 17.1 percent in the previous survey. A fourth candidate, independent Jaime Rodriguez, had 3.1 percent support, down by a tenth of a point. The presidential election is on July 1. Runner-up in the 2012 and 2006 elections, Lopez Obrador has capitalized on growing disenchantment with the PRI over record levels of violence, a series of political corruption scandals and sluggish economic growth. Lopez Obrador, 64, has for years sought to lump together the established parties, which includes the center-right National Action Party (PAN) that governed Mexico from 2000 to 2012, as jointly complicit in the country’s woes. Anaya, a former leader of the PAN, has been unable to build on his early support, and has spent much of the campaign defending himself against attacks from the PRI. The poll had a margin of error of up to 3.1 percentage points, Mitofsky said.<doc-sep>
Mexicans began casting votes in Sunday’s elections amid signs they’re set to hand the presidency to a left-wing leader for the first time in decades, in a revolt against entrenched corruption, crime and poverty. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador appears headed for a landslide win that could also give him majorities in both houses of Congress — a prospect that’s adding to anxiety in Mexico’s business world and financial markets. Nine governors and almost 3,000 mayors and local legislators will also be chosen. The biggest election in Mexican history got under way at 8 a.m. local time, though there were delays at some ballot stations. Polls are due to close at 6 p.m. and initial results are expected sometime after 8 p.m. The campaign has been marred by violence, with more than 120 politicians killed, including some 40 candidates. In a midday press conference, Lorenzo Cordova, head of the electoral regulator INE, said the indications were that voting was proceeding peacefully so far. Lopez Obrador cast his ballot early Sunday in the capital, Mexico City. “Today, people are going to decide if they want more of the same or a real change,” he said. Mexicans have many reasons to kick out their governing class. The country of 125 million has suffered a wave of violent crime, with homicides at record levels. Then there’s the $1.2 trillion economy, which has posted dismal growth rates by developing-nation standards. Almost half the population lives in poverty, a rate that’s changed little in a quarter-century. And the outgoing government has been caught up in a series of graft scandals. “We need a complete transformation in Mexico,” said Sergio Oceransky, 45, at a polling station in central Mexico City. “We’re experiencing a tremendous political crisis that’s no longer sustainable.” The 64-year-old Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, promises to ramp up social programs and run a clean administration. His strong showing fits with a global trend of anti-establishment politics, from gains by parties of the left and right in Europe to Donald Trump’s presidency in the U.S. There are also regional echoes: Mexico is one of the few countries in Latin America that hasn’t had a leftist government in recent decades. The candidate was a popular mayor of Mexico City last decade and has unsuccessfully run for the presidency twice since then. Lopez Obrador says he’ll govern as a pragmatist, and he’s promised not to nationalize companies or quit Nafta. But investors are worried that he’ll cancel private oil contracts, scrap a $13 billion Mexico City airport project that’s already under way, and rack up debts. The peso has slid about 10 percent since mid-April. Read more about Mexico’s populist presidential candidate here Lopez Obrador says he can fund his programs by eliminating corruption and cutting the salaries of high-paid bureaucrats, and won’t need to run bigger deficits. Economists are skeptical about the claim. His two main rivals for the presidency are both more business friendly -– and represent the only two parties to have ruled Mexico in almost a century. Ricardo Anaya, a brash 39-year-old, cobbled together a coalition of the right and center-left. His pledge of a drastic crackdown on corruption has been undermined by his ties with past governments seen as corrupt themselves. Jose Antonio Meade was finance minister under the outgoing –- and deeply unpopular –- administration of the Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI. It’s headed by President Enrique Pena Nieto, who was hailed as an economic reformer early in his term, and ended it with the lowest approval ratings in the history of the presidency. He’ll remain in office until December whatever today’s outcome, because Mexico has a five-month gap between elections and inauguration. Contact us at letters@time.com.