SONORA PRI AND PAN PARTIES PREPARE FOR 2006 ELECTIONS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 HERMOSILLO 000029

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

STATE FOR WHA/MEX, EMBASSY MEXICO FOR MCCA, POL

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PHUM MX
SUBJECT: SONORA PRI AND PAN PARTIES PREPARE FOR 2006 ELECTIONS

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1. (SBU) Summary. Electoral politics are beginning to grab the
local headlines in Sonora. In a state where the National
Action Party (PAN) is strongest, Institutional Revolutionary
Party (PRI) Governor Bours has visibly asserted his local
political identity and independence from the PRI national
presidential candidate Robert Madrazo. He is backing an
initiative with the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) to ensure
local control over selection of PRI candidates for Sonora
electoral contests. The Sonora PAN party also is maneuvering to
dominate the selection of its candidates for key local campaigns
rather than take direction from the national party. Internal
PAN friction over the candidate for mayor of Hermosillo, the
capital, is especially intense. Sonora PAN leaders say they are
open to cooperation with the The Party of the Democratic
Revolution (PRD) to thwart a Madrazo victory and return of PRI
to the presidency. End Summary.

GOVERNOR BOURS AND PRI POLITICS IN SONORA


2. (U) Jockeying for position in the July 2 Mexican national
elections is well underway in Sonora. Governor Eduardo Bours
Castelo, elected in 2000 as a member of PRI, has not endorsed
the PRI's 2006 presidential candidate, Roberto Madrazo. He
also, characteristically, is asserting his independence from the
national PRI party leadership by strongly supporting the efforts
of the Sonora PRI party to gain local control over selection of
the PRI candidates for Sonora's federal deputy and senator
positions. This effort is in the form of a challenge in IFE to
the validity of the national-level PRI coalition with the Green
Ecology Party (PVEM). Although no decision has been made on the
final formula for candidate selection, local media are
portraying the Sonora PRI's initiative as moving ahead after IFE
agreed on January 10 to refer its complaint to the Electoral
Tribunal of Judicial Power (Tepjf).


3. (U) The Sonora PRI challenge attacks a national-level
PRI-PVEM agreement to cooperate in the election campaign
(reportedly, inter alia, on selection of candidates) as
"anti-democratic and centralist." Governor Bours' role is
consistent with his long-time political projection of himself as
a leader of a "PRI of Change" or the "New PRI." However, some
Hermosillo political observers explain the maneuver as the
latest manifestation of a decades-old political rivalry between
Bours and Manlio Fabio Beltrones. Beltrones, who was PRI state
governor in 1991-96, currently represents the interests of PRI's
Madrazo faction in Sonora.


4. (U) Governor Bours set off speculation -- which is still
reverberating locally -- that he might even break with PRI when
he met January 10 in Mexico City with Josefina Vasquez Mota, the
political coordinator for PAN presidential candidate Felipe
Calderon. But the Governor has strongly denied that is his
intention. He has said that Vasquez Mota is an old friend and
they simply discussed the importance of clean elections and the
need for continuing political reform in Mexico.

MANAGING PAN SONORA INTERNAL PARTY TENSIONS


5. (U) Different factions of National Action Party (PAN) in
Sonora are also engaged in fierce competition for control over
the selection of local PAN candidates, especially who will stand
for PAN in the contest for mayor of Hermosillo, the capital of
Sonora. Mayor Maria Dolores del Rio, the PAN incumbent, has
united her supporters behind the "pre-candidacy" of Rodolfo
Flores Hurtado, who works with her in city hall. Flores Hurtado
faces internal PAN competition from Javier Gandara Magana, a
prominent and wealthy agricultural exporter, who switched from
PRI to PAN in a failed attempt to become Hermosillo mayor in

2003. Gandara Magana has the backing of Manuel Espino
Barrientos, the PAN national leader.


6. (SBU) PAN Sonora party officials Enrique Reina Lizarraga (
State Leader) and Irma Romo Salazar (Secretary General) recently
told PO that they are trying to keep the Flores Hurtado-Gandara
Magana competition from weakening local party unity (although
they indicated that Flores Hurtado would be their preferred
candidate). PAN is very strong in Sonora and currently holds
11 (of 31) seats in the Sonora State Congress, and 23 (of 72)
mayoralties throughout the state, including Hermosillo. At the
Federal level, the two elected senators from Sonora are from
PAN. Sonora has 7 (of 300) elected deputies in the National
Congress of Deputies. Three of those federal deputies from
Sonora are PANistas.


7. (SBU) Romo Salazar said she expects PAN to achieve similar
support in Sonora in 2006, although she expressed continuing
concern about the negative influence of Jorge Humberto Valencia
Valencia, a PRI supporter and President of Sonora's State
Electoral Council (CEE) on a clean vote count (Reftel). She

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said that the 2006 campaign in Sonora would be a tough one, even
under the best of conditions, noting that the organizations with
the most extensive networks in the state are still CocaCola, the
Church, and PRI. The PRD, she said, could do well in 2006 in
southern Sonora, a generally poorer portion of the state, and
draw votes from PRI.

SONORA PAN LEADERS' VIEWS ON THE NATIONAL RACE


8. (SBU) The Sonora PAN leaders were enthusiastic about Felipe
Calderon, their party's presidential candidate, but said that
the main objective on the national level is to keep Madrazo and
the PRI from the presidency. A Madrazo win, they said, would
result in a setback to democratic gains for the whole country.
They said that PAN and the PRD could cooperate to block that
outcome. Interestingly, they commented that PRD presidential
hopeful Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO),despite his leftist
and sometimes anti-American rhetoric, is actually more moderate
and could be expected to act "responsibly" as president if he
won.
CLARKE