An unlikely Mexican candidate rises to top

MEXICO CITY -- All of a sudden, what was almost unthinkable only a few weeks ago has become a difficult but real possibility -- that a candidate of President Vicente Fox's center-right ruling party may win Mexico's presidential elections next year.
Officials of the ruling National Action Party are ecstatic. They note that their candidate, Felipe Calderon, is rising in the polls, and that he is likely to benefit from the latest political scandal over a $900,000 Miami condo that one of his main rivals reportedly failed to declare as part of his assets.
Before we get into what are Calderon's real chances, let's take a look at the polls.
Earlier last week, the daily El Universal published a poll that shows former Mexico City left-of-center Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador ahead with 40 percent of the vote, followed by Calderon with 31 percent. Roberto Madrazo, of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) -- which ruled Mexico for seven decades until the year 2000 -- is a distant third with 21 percent.
Days earlier, a poll by the daily Reforma had for the first time placed Calderon in a virtual tie with Lopez Obrador. It gave Lopez Obrador 29 percent, Calderon 28 percent and Madrazo 21 percent of the vote.
Both polls showed that front-runner Lopez Obrador's numbers are falling somewhat, while Calderon's are climbing.
Until a few weeks ago, Lopez Obrador enjoyed a nearly insurmountable lead, which led many political analysts to conclude that he was a shoo-in for the July 2006 election. But after winning an upset party primary against Fox's favorite nominee, Calderon started rising in the polls thanks to a combination of fiery rhetoric and an ability to distance himself from the government's lackluster performance in efforts to speed up economic growth. Calderon, a former Fox energy minister, was never part of the president's inner circle.
Earlier last week, Calderon -- and to a lesser degree Lopez Obrador -- benefited from the revelation in a banner front-page story in Reforma that Madrazo owns a 31st- and 32nd-floor penthouse at 2000 Island Blvd. on South Florida's Williams Island. The apartment was reportedly bought in 1996 through Thurber Ltd., a Virgin Islands shell company.
Madrazo has since acknowledged owning the apartment, and said that everything he owns "is aboveboard." Reforma and other newspapers say, however, that they never saw any reference to the Miami apartment in Madrazo's property disclosures.
There is a growing belief in Mexico's political circles that the story will hurt Madrazo, because the PRI has long been haunted by massive corruption scandals, which caused it to lose the last presidential election despite having by far the most impressive vote-getting machinery. Madrazo's opponents are already saying that nothing has changed within the PRI.
Possible split
Jesus Reyes Heroles, a former energy minister and ambassador to the United States under the last PRI government, told me that if the PRI continues on its present course, there is a risk that the party will split, with some of its center-right leaders joining Calderon's campaign.
"As opposed to what was happening a month ago, now there is a real possibility that Calderon may win," Reyes Heroles says.
If there are new corruption allegations against high-ranking PRI officials, as many expect, it will be hard for Madrazo to climb in the polls. And in a two-way race between Lopez Obrador and Calderon, many center-right voters may feel they would be wasting their vote by supporting a third-place candidate, and may cast their votes for Calderon.
My conclusion: Calderon's rise in the polls may be temporary, because he is benefiting from the free publicity of having recently won an upset victory in a primary election. And Madrazo's financially mighty PRI could overcome its current image problems with a massive election-year propaganda campaign and its traditionally well-oiled vote-getting organization.
X Andres Oppenheimer is a Latin America correspondent for the Miami Herald. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.