ZUMPANGO, Mexico — The opening round in Mexico's July presidential election is being fought this weekend in the country's most populous state, a horseshoe-shaped territory of bustling industrial suburbs and quaint rural towns around the nation's capital.
Leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the front-runner according to most polls, is campaigning widely in the state of Mexico ahead of local elections Sunday, which are seen as a bellwether for the national campaign. He is lashing out against corruption with strident speeches against the "thieves" in government.
Conservative candidate Felipe Calderon has a new commercial with a gesture that he and his supporters repeat at his campaign rallies: He throws up his hands to show that they are "clean" of the stain of bribery.
And the candidate running third in the polls, Roberto Madrazo, is trying hard to rally the faithful in a state that his Institutional Revolutionary Party can't afford to lose if he wants to be president, even as corruption scandals eat away at the party's support.
"We can't rest now because we've already got half our body through the door" of power, Madrazo told the party faithful at a recent rally in the state capital, Toluca. "We're going to get the rest in, for the good of Mexico."
On Sunday, voters in the state will choose 125 mayors and 75 state legislators. All three leading presidential candidates have campaigned extensively on behalf of their parties' slates with their eyes on the national election.
"The results will be very important symbolically," said Jose Antonio Crespo, a political analyst. "Whoever does well will be in a good position for July."
In the 2000 presidential election, Vicente Fox of the conservative National Action Party won Mexico state on his way to a historic victory that ended seven decades of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI. Last year, with Fox's popularity waning, the PRI candidate won the governor's race.
Now it's the leftist Democratic Revolution Party that is riding the coattails of its presidential candidate, Lopez Obrador, the popular former mayor of Mexico City. The party, known as the PRD, hopes for a strong showing in the local races.
Lopez Obrador has campaigned in the state more than any other presidential candidate. On the stump, he picks up the populist themes that defined his rise to prominence as Mexico City's mayor, a post he held until last year.
