Hazing in Durango?

“We'll talk in June,” Alberto Anaya concluded. On the other side of the table, Luisa María Alcalde had ignored the national leadership of the Workers' Party (PT). Both party leaders were negotiating the electoral coalition in Veracruz, and the Labor Party had requested 28 candidates, barely 5% of the nominations the ruling coalition would register. “You're not worth that!” the former Obradorist secretary retorted. “We have 15 positions for you. If I give you more, how do you think the Green Party will react?”

The Morena leader and Governor Rocío Nahle had other results. And they are optimistic: the cherry-colored party triumphed in Acayucan, Xalapa, Veracruz, Tantoyuca, Coatzacoalcos, and Minatitlán. "Some see the glass half empty, others see it half full. I feel very proud of my Movement and all those who participate in it, after this electoral result obtained in Veracruz in the last electoral process," the Morena leader stated.

The PT party did not join Morena in Veracruz and won 28 mayoralties last Sunday, the 1st. In Durango, the party leadership heeded Senator Alejandro González Yáñez's request to join the PVEM-Morena coalition to reclaim the northern state's capital for the party's left.

Gonzalo managed to become mayor of Durango 30 years ago without allying himself with other political forces. And now, Dr. José Ramón Enríquez headed the ruling party's ticket: the three parties gave him a mere 40,000 votes, leaving him in a humiliating third place, 50,000 votes less than the winner, Toño Ochoa, and 12,000 fewer than Pancho Franco, a member of the MC party.

It couldn't have been worse: the PRI (26%) remained the leading electoral force in Durango, albeit with only 5,000 more votes than Morena, whose new leadership had a failed electoral debut. The PRI-PAN coalition won 15 municipalities, one more than the ruling party. Luisa María Alcalde and the Secretary of Organization, Andrés Manuel López Beltrán, failed in their first mission: to wrest from the PRI one of its two strongholds in the country.

Were Luisa and Andy tricked? At the start of the campaigns, Dr. Enríquez—a former senator close to Marcelo Ebrard and Jalisco businessman Carlos Lomelí—was shown a poll that placed Morena in second place in the polls, 10 points behind the frontrunners.

In the air, but especially on the ground, the work of Morena's campaigners proved fruitless in the working-class neighborhoods of Durango. "The doctor was never able to recover; he played to lose," complained federal legislators who heeded the national leadership's call to work for a lost cause. "There was a lot of arrogance on the part of the CEN representatives," retorted members of the candidate's team. "With their egos soaring, they came on vacation and never left their hotel. They didn't care about winning."

Negligence or betrayal? Morena has built a solid base in the Laguna region, but the formula practiced over the last three years simply didn't work in Durango. Luisa María and Andy belatedly discovered that some states still obey the rules of the old politics, that electoral structures—even if disguised in Servants of the Nation vests—are governed by the highest bidder... in this specific case, the governor, who, by the way, has similar approval ratings to the President.

"Villegas owns everything, including the local Morena party and the state delegation of the Ministry of Welfare," lament other federal legislators, who reported directly to the National Palace about the cherry-red debacle.