The sad, race-to-the-bottom practice of declaring oneself winner

With the risk of blatantly generalizing, I will blatantly generalize that it hardly speaks well of candidates who, despite all exit polls, quick polls, partial counts, full counts etc counting against them with a wide margin, still declare their victory. It seems unfortunately there has gone quite a bit of inflation in this in recent years: Better to declare yourself a winner, seems to be the logic, as in the short run there is very little to lose, and in the long run, people forget whatever happened in the last election.

Yet this is not a victimless crime: The casualty is the credibility of the electoral institute, whose responsibility it is to name the person who won the most votes, while the electoral tribunal will deal with any potential impugnations and then declare the winner. By having candidates not holding back at all yet bursting out that really, they won, the credibility of these institutions are undermined.

The case in point here is Martha Elena García, the PAN candidate for governor in Nayarit. Despite that all polls - quick counts and I believe exit polls as well - indicated she was behind the winner, PRI's Roberto Sandoval Castañeda, with double digits, she had, mind you, her own poll that showed her ahead by several percentage points. And with this single poll that she claimed to have, she declared herself the winner, suffering ridicule.

AMLO's declaration on the night of July 2-3 2006, though he had promised to await IFE's verdict, is rather tame by comparison.

Nayarit elections: Can PRI be beat?

Here's a nice graphic from Milenio regarding the Nayarit elections. What is being elected: Governor, 30 local deputies, and 20 municipal heads. The 2011 results should be out later today at the home page of the Nayarit Electoral Insittute, IEEN. 

And another interesting graphic, on what 2012 hopefuls have visited what states. AMLO leads Nayarit - four visits - despite not backing his party's candidate, Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, but a PT/Convergencia candidate with absolute no chance of winning the election:

Nayarit: No excuses for AMLO, yet betrayal of party

In Nayarit, the PRD is not running in alliance with the PAN. Its candidate, Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, has been a man of the left his entire life, never a priísta, and rejected the suggestion he would decline in favor of PAN's candidate, Martha Elena García.

Yet AMLO, rather than backing the PRD candidate, travels to Nayarit to back Nayar Marroquín, candidate of PT and Convergencia. Not only is it a completely useless undertaking - his vote intention is minimal - but he will also take votes from the PRD candidate. So why is AMLO, a former party president and the PRD's 2006 candidate, doing this? This time there is absolutely no excuse, as in the past, where he opposed PAN-PRD alliance candidates.

This is the true face of AMLO showing: A man who have absolutely no compunction about betraying his old party, as long as it benefits his own, highly personalistic project.

Drama in Nayarit: Bullets fly in PRI's and PRD's campaign headquarters

It is hard to imagine the Nayarit gubernatorial campaign in Nayarit heating up further: Armed men entered the hotel in Tepeic where both PRI and PRD have their campaign headquarters, where after a 5-minute shootout they kidnapped a so far unidentified person. Jesús Ortega, former PRD president and now head of the PRD campaign in Nayarit, was at the hotel and tweeted about the shootout as it happened. 

PRD's gubernatorial candidate Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo also suspended campaigning in the Ruiz municipality upon recommendation from his staff. 

PRD's gubernatorial candidate in Nayarit threatened by organized crime

Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, the candidate of  Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) to be the enxt governor of Nayarit, said he has received threats from organized crime, and had therefore accepted offers of a bulletproof car and bodyguards provided by the state government.

Nayarit polls, gubernatorial election: PRI ahead 49%

The most recent Nayarit polls:

Roberto Sandoval Castañeda, PRI: 49%
Martha Elena García, PAN: 33%
Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, PRD: 17%
Nayar Mayorquín, PT/Convergencia: 1 %

Direct link to detailed .pdf file on the poll here.

Nayarit ironies

After increasing reports that the PAN-PRD alliance in Nayarit is coming to an end, for the time being, a time-out: The parties agreed to a new poll to determine the coalition's candidate.

It is worth nothing the irony here: PAN reportedly backed out when it failed to have PRD legislator Martha Elena García made its official candidate, in favor of also PRD legislator Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo: PAN clearly wants to go with the wife of the former governor (also with a PAN past) rather than Acosta Naranjo, a man who has never been a member of PRI or PAN, but is a founding member of the PRD with a long trajectory on the left before that.

But guess who AMLO's incondicionales want to be the candidate? Martha Elena García, the one favored by PAN, who in the end might be the party's candidate! The IDN faction, among others, who is led by the Bejarano/Padierna couple, were strong backers of García, and adamantly opposes Acosta. So much for their anti-PAN rhetoric. Martha Elena García, despite elected as a PRD legislator, is to boo not even a member of the PRD.

AMLO, to clarify, came out to throw plague on both houses, instead backing a PT-Convergencia candidate, Nayar Mayorquín, who has absolutely no chance of being elected - again showing that he could care less if the PRI will come out on top, as long as his opponents within the party don't come out on top.

Here's a useful interview with Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo.

Polls for Nayarit gubernatorial election

Still at a very early stage in the electoral process in Nayarit, in the sense that none of the official candidates have been chosen yet, here are nonetheless the results of a poll of votes according to party preferences that give PRI 38 percent, PRD 13.8, and PAN 9.8 percent support. This means at this stage very little, and the one-on-one lineups quite likely reflect name recognition more than anything, but it is interesting reading nonetheless:

For high resolution  PDF file of the image below, click here. 

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.

Nayarit PAN-PRD alliance officially registered

While the battle over a possible PRD-PAN alliance in Mexico State will rage on for the coming weeks, in Nayarit the PRD and PAN agreed to officially register their electoral alliance with the state electoral institute. The coalition's name is "Nayarit nos une," and will dispute the governorships, 20 mayoralties, 30 local legislative seats, and 138 local governing councils at play.
Likely the candidate will be a PRD member, but it is entirely open whether it will be Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo or Martha Elena García Gómez, both national deputies; the former a lifelong activist on the left, the latter the wife of a former governor who until recently was a panista.

Nayarit elections and the party Convergencia: "We will only join winner"

Perhaps not verbatim, but pretty close: The party Convergencia in Nayarit said it would only join a coalition of PAN and PRD if the candidate proposed was the one ahead in the polls.

Everybody loves a winner, but especially Convergencia. That said, expect Convergencia in the end to line up behind thecandidacy of former PRI, then PRD, then PAN, then whatever party she can use for her gain, politician Martha Elena García, now a federal deputy, and wife of a former governor of the state.

Nayarit 2011 elections: PAN-PRD alliance official, of sorts. For AMLO, history repeated as farce

The national presidents of PRD and PAN, Jesús Ortega and César Nava respectively, signed a "letter of intent" where the parties committed to maintain an electoral alliance for the upcoming gubernatorial elections in Nayarit, regardless of whether the candidate will be a perredista or panista.

PRD has a very strong card: Federal deputy Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, a very congenial man who tends to be popular with most everyone and has moreover a reputation as an effective leader. Acosta Naranjo was just granted a leave of absence from the Chamber of Deputies, and has already started criss-crossing the state, which will hold elections July 3, 2011.

However, the wife of former governor Antonio Echavarría, Martha Elena García, also a PRD deputy, has declared she will also run for the nomination. To recall, PRD ran Nayarit 1999-2005, when AMLO enticed Antonio Echavarría to dump the PRI to join the PRD and run for governor under a broad alliance that also included the PAN  - yes, the party that AMLO is now loudly declaring it is impossible to ally with anywhere at all given "principled differences." AMLO has, of course, opposed a PAN-PRD alliance in Nayarit in 2011. Of course, since 1999, much water has run under the bridge, such as the 2006 elections, which AMLO claims cheated him from victory. To be upset at PAN for 2006 is of course quite understandably, if you truly believe a fraud took place. Yet claiming "principled differences" is just pure hypocrisy, given AMLO's promotion of the previous PAN-PRD alliance in Nayarit.

Note that Martha Elena García already in 2005 wanted to become governor to succeed her husband - which should make alarm bells of nepotism ring loudly. The kicker: She was then not a PRD member, nor a PRI member, but sought the PAN nomination (!) - only the arch-opportunistic party Convergencia backed her candidacy then, which she desisted from, and renounced from the PAN. Her PRD credentials are, to put it mildly, wafer thin. Yet don't be surprised if AMLO backs her nomination: Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, a man who has never been a PRI or PAN member yet with a life-long pedigree on the political left, is also a member of the social-democratic PRD faction Nueva Izquierda, which AMLO loathes.

First PRD-PAN alliance confirmed: Nayarit 2011.

The PRD state council in Nayarit voted unanimously to go in an electoral alliance in 2011 when the small coastal state is voting for governor. While the PAN won't decide until October, it is pretty much a done deal; unlike the PRD, the final decision within the PAN will be taken centrally by the PAN's National Council, which clearly supports the PAN-PRD alliances to stop the return of PRI.


PRD national deputy Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo has been preparing his candidacy for quite a while, and appears an exceptionally strong candidate to replace PRI governor Ney González.. While he is a close ally of PRD national president Jesús Ortega and a central member of the Nueva Izquierda, the largest party faction in PRD, he has pretty much buena onda with even the lopezobradoristas, and this should augur well for a unified PRD in the upcoming elections. 


However, given that AMLO has hysterically declared the PRD-PAN alliances to be "treason," regardless of whether the PRD state councils express support for them or not, Acosta Naranjo may still be in for (not so) "friendly fire" from members of is own party. Will AMLO also seek to sabotage this candidacy, as he has proclaimed he will do in Mexico State? Is Acosta Naranjo, then, also a traitor?