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By Sandra Dibble | SDUT
8:05 a.m., June 28, 2012

TIJUANA — It seemed like old times for Mexico’s National Action Party: a chanting crowd, a sea of fluttering blue-and-white flags, a row of candidates waving from a stage in downtown Tijuana one evening last week in support of presidential candidate Josefina Vázquez Mota.

But much has changed for the PAN in Baja California. The party that more than two decades ago helped usher in a new democratic era for Mexico when its voters elected the country’s first opposition governor in modern history in Baja California is now struggling for its place in an uncertain political landscape.

As Mexicans prepare to choose a new president Sunday, the results will set the stage for Baja California’s next political chapter. They will offer a preview of the alignment of forces as the state prepares for the 2013 governor’s race and mayoral contests in all five municipalities.

Voters in this northwest border state of 3.2 million residents have historically shown a fiercely independent streak, sometimes choosing the pro-business PAN and at other times supporting the once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI.

Two independent Baja California polls released in the past week now show the PAN in third place in the presidential contest among the state's voters, echoing the most recent Mexican national polls. Tijuana’s Zeta newsweekly published results last Friday of its poll that put Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in the lead, while Testa Marketing late Wednesday presented results of its poll showing PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto in first place, slightly ahead of the PRD.

Far from Mexico’s dominant center, Baja California has been influenced politically by strong cross-border ties built through countless family and business connections, trade, tourism and the presence of hundreds of U.S-owned maquiladora factories. Unlike their more conservative and orthodox PANistas brethren in central Mexico, Baja California’s PAN members have been known for their norteño pragmatism.

Baja California “doesn’t have the political culture of the rest of Mexico,” said Victor Alejandro Espinoza Valle, a political analyst at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte. “It’s a very border-oriented society, with much immigration, permeated by external political values.”

Ernesto Ruffo Appel, the former governor who won the 1989 election and is now a PAN senate candidate from Baja California, said the state’s border economy has been key to setting the political tone. “It’s a Mexican state that doesn’t depend on Mexico’s internal market,” he said, and that allows the state “to pull away from the norm of Mexican politics.”

The state for more than two decades was considered a bastion of the PAN, Mexico’s longtime opposition party that in 2000 triumphed in its first presidential election, winning again six years later with President Felipe Calderón, whose term expires this year. Since Ruffo’s 1989 victory, Baja California’s have voters continued to elect PAN governors without interruption, most recently in 2007 with the election of the current governor, José Guadalupe Osuna Millán. But they have repeatedly shown a willingness to switch allegiances in other races, most recently in the state’s 2010 mayoral races, when a majority backed the PRI in all five of the state’s municipalities.


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All I can say is :

I truly hope PRI does not win!

They ruled for over 70 years,
Clean out the country financially numerous times during that reign.

I have said it numerous times .
"Mexico never real developed naturally like it's northern neighbors.
They were conquered by the Spanish,
Rule by dictators for years,
Then ended up being ruled by a so called Democratic Party for over 70 years."

Just saying!!!

I am just along for the ride