PRI didn't win everywhere on Sunday

In one of the four state elections Sunday, the PRI actually lost, as of counting, at least 10 municipalities, including several important urban areas, and the outcome in the state capital Pachuca is still too close to call.

That state is Hidalgo. It is the only of the four states in which the PRD and the PAN went into an alliance.

Narcopolitics: The case of Hidalgo

In yesterday's El Universal, former gubernatorial candidate Xóchitl Gálvez revealed that the narcos offered to support her campaign with 50 million pesos, an offered she refused, but didn't report out of fear for her family.

Today Hidalgo is having another election - this time for head of the state's 84 municipalities - and Los Zetas are arguably backing candidates in particularly the Huasteca region, a Zeta stronghold.

Thanks to a 2009 electoral reform that aimed at streamlining the state elections - elections for governors at the same time as municipal elections  - the new municipal heads will serve five and a half years.

Quite a prize.

Final recourse rejected: Francisco Olvera governor-elect in Hidalgo

As expected, the Mexican federal electoral tribunal, TEPJF, rejected the last complaints by the Hidalgo Nos Une coalition of PAN-PRD and its candidate Xóchitl Gálvez, who had demanded the annulation of the 2010 gubernatorial election in Hidalgo.

As magistrate Salvador Nava noted, the claims were "eloquent and heated, but without effective legal grounds."

Magistrate Pedro Esteban Penagos accepted that several of the complaints might have caused the annulment of the election, but that they were not well enough documented.

Gálvez said she would accept the tribunal's decision, as did the Hidalgo branch of the PRD.

TEPJF verdict rejects Xóchitl Gálvez' complaint: Hidalgo election to be valid

Finally, the TEPJF, Mexico's highest electoral tribunal, presented a verdict regarding Xóchitl Gálvez' major complaint against the Hidalgo gubernatorial election of July 2010: The tribunal rejected it as unfounded.

While TEPJF has yet to rule on another complaint lodged by Gálvez against winning candidate José Francisco Olvera, this pretty much settles the issue, as it is highly unlikely now that the Hidalgo election will not end in the outcome of Olvera belatedly assuming the governorship.

Specifically, Olvera was accused of a false start - of illegally jump starting his campaign for governor by holding a mass rally in a bullring. Yet the judges ruled that as this was technically only for PRI supporters, it did not amount to actually campaigning. The judges also rejected two more complaints on use of government resources to promote the candidate, and "black propaganda," thought the "false start" complaint was Gálvez' most important card.

Note that Gálvez' political trajectory has hardly come to an end or even slowed down; she will likely be a mayoral candidate in the upcoming Hidalgo state elections. Then, many see her even in Los Pinos.

"New" PAN-PRD alliance: Hidalgo

While PAN and PRD allied for the 2010 gubernatorial election in Hidalgo, which their candidate Xóchitl Gálvez are still fighting in court, what is notable about their new alliance is that in 2011 there are no gubernatorial elections in the state, though the heads of 84 municipalities will be elected. Yesterday it was reported that the Hidalgo branch of PAN had unanimously voted in favor of an alliance with PRD in this election as well - as far as I gather, the first time such an alliance has come into being when what is at stake is only municipal elections, and not gubernatorial elections.