Mexico’s ruling party chose veteran politician Clara Brugada as its candidate for Mexico City mayor early Saturday, leaving her in pole position to be the second consecutive woman elected to the position if she wins next June.
The disputed nomination to govern the Mexican capital’s approximately nine million residents was announced by leaders of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s leftist National Regeneration Movement (MORENA).
“Thank you to everyone who gave us their trust,” Brugada said on Saturday in X. “Today we came out strong and united to win the heart of our great capital,” he added.
To take office, two-time congresswoman Brugada resigned as mayor of Iztapalapa, a sprawling district in the southeast of the capital of more than 1.8 million residents where she amassed a respected record during three terms in office.
Brugada, 60, got the nod from MORENA even though the capital’s former police chief, Omar García Harfuch, finished first by nearly 14 percentage points in a poll commissioned by the party.
But party leaders said García Harfuch, who survived an assassination attempt in 2020 and is a close confidant of former Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, lost to Brugada because of rules set by Mexico’s electoral authority that require parties to nominate to a certain number of women.
The rules have forced party leaders to adjust candidate nominations to achieve gender parity in gubernatorial elections since 2020.
Mexico City has for decades been a bastion of the left, but MORENA suffered a major setback in the 2021 midterm elections, losing more than half of the city’s districts to the opposition.
The city’s top job has also served as a springboard for presidential ambitions. In 2005, López Obrador launched the first of three presidential bids from the mayor’s office.
(Reporting by David Alire García; editing by Dave Graham)
Source: Ambito
