Politics: More Pieces of of the 2018 Puzzle in Place
The next two weeks are shaping up to be decisive for the 2018 electoral process, and parties will have sorted out by mid December the procedures through which they will select their nominees for office.
With Andrés Manuel López Obrador having a lock on the nomination of his center-left Morena party, he is busy trying to emphasize the “center” part of the equation beginning with the slapdash National Project text he published Monday, and the list of his cabinet picks he is scheduled to announce December 14, both of which are being tailored to reassure susceptible middle class voters and business leaders.
The PRI formally announced its formal candidate selection process on Thursday. While polls showed Interior Minister Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong as the favorite, speculation increasingly focused on two other cabinet members: Jose Antonio Meade (finance) with his broad support within the business community and among middle class voters, and Aurelio Nuño (education), who appeared to be the most reliable guarantor of continuity for Peña policies and personnel. Earlier today, Jose Antonio Meade announced his resignation from the cabinet and appears to be the candidate for the PRI (see our In Brief published today, "Definition in the PRI candidate".)
The outlook for the Citizens Front for Mexico (PAN, PRD and MC) is especially complicated as PAN Chairman Ricardo Anaya remains the hands-on favorite for the nomination, but he must first make sufficient concessions to keep two other contenders on board with the front while not ceding so many down-ballot candidacies and other jobs as to set off a rebellion within his own party. Any additional high profile splits or missteps in stage-managing the internal selection process – no mean feat from any angle – could prove fatal to the front’s prospects, and would turn the 2018 race into a two-way contest in which López Obrador would try to make it into a referendum on the unpopular Peña Nieto.
One last wildcard at this point is whether Jaime Rodríguez Calderón and Margarita Zavala will make it on to the ballot and potentially shake up the race.
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