Katie Putnam, AL DÍA: News and Analysis from the Mexico Institute, 2/1/2011
The results from Guerrero’s gubernatorial election this Sunday illuminate the personalities and evolving strategies in Mexican politics in the lead-up to the 2012 presidential race.
First, the relatively clean election itself ended a contentious, often dirty, and surprising campaign with questionable front runners. The two principal candidates were reputedcaciques from Guerrero’s darker past; Ángel Aguire Rivero (PRD coalition), a PRI cardholder until August with suspicions of human rights abuses as an interim governor in the late 1990s, beat Acapulco Mayor Manuel Añorve (PRI coalition), accused of being on the payroll of drug cartels. (Both candidates strenuously deny these allegations.)
In any case, the alliance around the PRD was greatly, and unexpectedly, strengthened in the final days of the campaign when the trailing PAN candidate withdrew and threw his support to the coalition. In the end, the PRD coalition, headed by a man the party itself accused of abuses two decades ago, proved more appealing to voters than the PRI alternative, and by a margin of about 14 percent.
The Mexico Institute's Elections Guide 