Guerrero gubernatorial elections: 7-point lead for Ángel Aguirre Rivero

Ahead of next Sunday's election, the campaign to be Guerrero's next governor is drawing to a close.
Today's El Universal reveals a 7-percent lead for Ángel Aguirre Rivero, the candidate of of a coalition of the left over PRI-candiate Mannuel Añorve Baños. This is truly an upset; Guerrero was one of the states, given the misrule of Zeferino Torreblanca, the PRI just a few months ago had chalked up as a very likely win.

As childish as it gets: PRI hurries to steal opponents' campaign name in Nayarit

In Guerrero, the official name of the PRD-PT-Convergencia campaign behind the candidacy of Ángel Aguirre Rivero is "Guerrero nos une," or "Guerrero unifies us."
In Nayarit, which also faces gubernatorial elections this year, a PRD-PAN coalition has for many weeks been using a similar slogan, "Nayarit unifies us," a play on the Guerrero coalition name.

Yet today, just hours before the opposition coalition registered this campaign name officially with Nayarit's electoral authorities, a PRI-Green Party-PANAL coalition registered with this name for their coalition - with the effect that the two principal contenders in Nayarit now have registered with the same name. Keep in mind that the "X (name of state) unifies us" was also the name of the various of the PAN-PRD coalition the past summer. Yet PRI, in what must be one of the most childish acts in the party's history in Nayarit, hurried to snatch away this campaign slogan from PRD-PAN.

This hardly augurs well for the political climate of the upcoming election.

Claudia Corichi García's drunk calling; Amalia García ignores legal deadline

Claudia Corichi García is the daughter of until rather recently governor of Zacatecas, Amalia García Medina. She is a national senator of the PRD, and has past years faced quite a few charges of nepotism, of being utterly unqualfified for a senator (the bar is admittedly low), and of abusing her position for own gains - though she has never been convicted of any wrongdoing. Yet her critics found further ammunition this weekend: An intercepted telephone call where Corichi, according to some reports "in a state of inebriation," offers the PRD-PT-Convergencia candidate Ángel Aguirre to send 100 "volunteers." Aguirre responds by stating a desire for "sweets and books" to be handed out.

There are many angles here: It just happens to be that the phone conversation was leaked after a barrage of evidence has surfaced for the active and illegal -and far worse- intermission of other PRI governors, chiefly Enrique Peña Nieto, in the election. It should also be worrisome for Aguirre and his campaign that his phone conversations are obviously tapped, either by PRI directly or certainly by collaborators of the party. Yet in the end it is also an indictment of the morals of Claudia Corichi. Despite the relatively innocuous transgression, her attempted intermission (in return for what?) comes at time when her mother is facing her own, and far more serious, woes: This weekend was the deadline for the former Zacatecas governor to come up with evidence she claimed would fully dispel the many claims of embezzlement she has been facing from the new state administration. Guillermo Huizar, the state comptroller, said his office had not received any documents. That means in practice that the former governor may face legal sanctions in a few weeks' time.

It would be too cheap with a "the apple doesn't fall far" comment here, especially as none of the two - mother or daughter - has actually been convicted of any wrongdoing. Yet Claudia Corichi's drunk calling offering help to the Guerrero candidate certainly does little good for her own reputation or that of her mother.

Fernando Castro Trenti admits he was wrong, then jumps on another stupid claim

To his credit, Senator Fernando Castro Trenti admitted that the PRD activist Guillermo Sánchez Nava, who was nearly beaten to death by presumed PRI thugs in Guerrao, was actually attacked and that it was not faked. He could hardly do anything else: Sánchez Nava's own children publicly presented his medical diagnosis. It was simply idiotic to jump on such a baseless claim to begin with, but fine: He rectifies.

Yet then comes the next claim, worthy of a U.S. tea bagger: A few days ago, "someone" (very likely the Manuel Añorve Baños campaign) had a fake La Jornada newspaper made that proclaimed that the PRD candidate admitted he lost a recent gubernatorial debate. It was all made up; the newspaper was fake.

Yet the good senator, rather than having learned from postulating outrageous claims he can't back up, mistakes, now claims, counter intuitively and without a shred of evidence, that the fake paper was actually made by the PRD. Will an apology be forthcoming this time as well?

Baja California Sur elections: Marcos Covarrubias, born-again panista

It is not illegal to change parties, and often there are quite legitimate reasons for it - e.g. Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas departure from the PRI in the 1980s stemmed from the party's rightward shift. Other times, candidates themselves do change ideologically - they move to the political left or right, and sometimes do no longer "fit" with their old party. It happens. However, most times in Mexico the decision by a candidate to leave his or her party appears unfortunately motivated by purely opportunistic motivations, such as having lost a party primary for an elected position.

In Baja California Sur, the case of Marcos Covarrubias appears decidedly a case of the latter. While Covarrubias has every right to ditch his old party the PRD in favor of becoming the PAN's candidate for government, his new-found enthusiasm for PAN and president Calderón is reaching new levels: In a debate with the other main candidates for governor -  Ricardo Barroso (PRI-PVEM), Luis Armando Díaz (PRD-PT), and Blanca Meza (of Nueva Alianza, the party that uses children as vote getters) - Covarrubias spent most of the alloted time extolling the virtues of federal programs and glorifying Calderón, who he argued has the highest approval rating in Baja California Sur. The audience responded by booing.

Yes, changing party is one thing - but really, how can one expect to be taken seriously - indeed, that one's new "convictions" truly are such - when one candidate can so easily jump across to an opposition party and assume, line, hook, and singer, all that it parties stand for, from almost literally one day to another?

It certainly helps explain the huge distrust Mexicans exhibit toward their parties, and that so many feel that politicians have very little convictions beyond furthering their own personal ambitions.
People like Marcos Covarrubias - yes, he, too, bailed the PRD just when he failed to become its candidate a few weeks back - certainly contribute to these sentiments.