MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s verbal attacks on a charismatic opposition rival have raised his profile and fueled concern among some supporters that, far from derailing his presidential campaign , is undermining his own party.
Since Senator Xochitl Gálvez announced on June 27 that she was running for the top post, leftist López Obrador has mentioned her by name more than 50 times during his daily press conferences and public support for her. is growing.
An indigenous computer engineer with a playful sense of humor and shrewd political instincts, the business-friendly Gálvez has built an opposition he believes can compete with populist leftist López Obrador as his party searches for a successor.
The president has portrayed Gálvez as the candidate of a corrupt elite and last week intensified her political positions by publicizing her alleged business dealings, leading her to accuse him of abuse of power.
By law, Mexican presidents can only serve a single six-year term. MORENA is very favored to win, polls show.
Since June 30, López Obrador’s approval rating has fallen nearly 3.5 percentage points to 58.4 percent, according to a daily tracking poll by polling firm Consulta Mitofsky.
Gálvez, who has described growing up in poverty and selling gelatin on the street, says he comes from more humble origins than the leading presidential contenders for MORENA, the former mayor of Mexico City. Claudia Sheinbaum and former Minister of Foreign Affairs Marcelo Ebrard.
Xochitl Galvez in front of the National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico on June 12, 2023. Carlos Santiago / NurPhoto via AP file
López Obrador has tried to break that narrative by calling Gálvez a millionaire, said Roy Campos, director of Mitofsky.
Not everyone appreciates it.
“The president should be paying attention to the public, not who he can mess with,” said Gabriel Islas, 48, a Mexico City resident who urged López Obrador to stop fooling Gálvez.
But some arguments remain.
“(Galvez) is a friend of PRIAN,” said Beatriz Vázquez, a 61-year-old teacher, using a slight favoritism for López Obrador to combine the PAN and rival-turned-ally the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) as defenders of the elites monetary
Turntables
Gálvez has again attacked the president and this month filed a complaint with the electoral authority saying that he violated the rules of impartiality.
“What the president wants is for me to leave,” he said after he disclosed his finances. “But he won’t make it.”
The authority this week ordered López Obrador to remain neutral and refrain from electoral comments. He said he would “stop” those comments, but he and his aides continue to allude to it.
Some loyalists of López Obrador see in his treatment of Gálvez echoes of how he suffered as mayor of the capital at the hands of his adversary, the then president Vicente Fox of the PAN, in a case known in Spanish as the “desafuero”.
Under the Fox administration, Congress in 2005 stripped López Obrador of immunity from prosecution over a minor land dispute. The case was later dropped, but it sparked widespread protests and boosted López Obrador’s popularity ahead of the 2006 presidential election.
He narrowly lost and was defeated again in 2012 before finally winning in 2018 in a landslide.
“The mistake that Fox made with Andrés Manuel, the president is making now with Xochitl,” said a senior Mexican official who declined to be named, noting that Gálvez’s rise could increase the opposition’s presence to Congress in 2024.
It also risked making Galvez better known than Sheinbaum, who is many analysts’ top candidate, the official added.
López Obrador has acknowledged that some allies want him to shut up instead of “building up” Gálvez. But, he said, the public needs to know that she had “gone from selling jello to being a millionaire.”
Lorena Villavicencio, a MORENA politician who supports Sheinbaum, said Gálvez’s financial affairs should have been kept private and subject to the relevant authorities. He urged his party to avoid resorting to tactics used in the past against López Obrador.
“The negative campaign is counterproductive,” he said. “And it tends to put the spotlight on whoever’s on the receiving end.”
