MEXICO CITY (AP) – Mexican voters elected their first independent gubernatorial candidate, seen as a protest against party politics, while giving the ruling party a lead in Congress, sending mixed messages in midterm elections.
President Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, lost legislative seats, according to official vote counts released Monday by the electoral institute. But a strong and controversial campaign by allied Green Party boosted that party by as many as 20 seats, which could give the ruling party a voting majority for the first time in nearly two decades.
"The PRI lost, but not very much," said Jesus Cantu, political analyst at the Monterrey Institute of Technology.
In an election marred by sporadic violence, independent Jaime Rodriguez, known as "El Bronco," won the governor's race in the border state of Nuevo Leon, ousting the PRI from a key state that includes the business hub of Monterrey. His popularity was attributed to voters' disgust with all political parties.
"I think in the whole country, this will help the political parties to renew and transform themselves so they can be better," said Rodriguez, adding that he would give them a "six-year vacation," a reference to the length of his term in office.
Rodriguez said his first action as governor would be to attack corruption: "We have to investigate the entire previous government."
It was the first election in Mexico to allow unaffiliated candidates, thanks to electoral reform last year.
The horseback-riding, boot-clad, tough-talking Rodriguez earned his nickname after he survived two assassination attempts that left his car bullet-ridden as mayor of a suburb of Monterrey. He said the attacks were from a drug cartel.
His support harkens back to 2000, when another plainspoken cowboy candidate, Vicente Fox, managed to topple the PRI's 71-year rule and win the presidency for the opposition National Action Party.
Sunday's vote came amid widespread discontent with politicians in Mexico, where corruption scandals, a lackluster economy and human rights concerns related to missing students and suspected army massacres have tarnished Pena Nieto's image and fed anti-government protests.
Green Party ads were everywhere during the campaign as it marketed itself as a fresh alternative, and the party was fined millions for violating campaign finance laws. But the strategy paid off. The Green Party votes in lockstep with the PRI, and critics called it a PRI tactic to bolster a small ally at election time when it is down in the polls.
Thousands of soldiers and federal police guarded polling stations where violence and calls for boycotts threatened to mar the vote for 500 seats in the lower house of Congress, nine of 31 governorships and hundreds of mayors and local officials.
Protesters burned ballot boxes in several restive states in southern Mexico, but officials called the disruptions "isolated incidents." A statement from a team of election observers from the Organization of America States, headed by former Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla, said the incidents didn't prevent people from voting.
"There were those who wanted to affect the elections, including with violence in the previous days designed to discourage the public," Pena Nieto said in a national address. "But the mandate Mexicans gave to authorities today was to reject violence and intolerance."
A loose coalition of radical teachers' unions and activists had vowed to block the vote, and protesters burned at least seven ballot boxes and election materials in Tixtla, the Guerrero state town where 43 students vanished at the hands of a local police force, creating national outrage.
Ballot boxes were also destroyed in the southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca. In Oaxaca's capital, masked protesters emptied a vehicle of ballots, boxes and voting tables and burned the material in the main square.
The state government reported 88 arrests related to the destruction of election materials and disturbances in the capital, Tuxtepec and Salina Cruz.
In Monterrey, two political parties reported that armed men were intimidating voters in three towns near the border with Texas.
Violence ahead of the elections claimed the lives of three candidates, one would-be candidate and at least a dozen campaign workers or activists.
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