Mexicans in U.S. sign up for conservative party

Mexican congressman César Nava Vásquez was in Los Angeles CA on December2 to recruit for Mexico’s ruling National Action Party (PAN). Mexico’s presidential elections will not occur until 2012, but Los Angeles is important for President Felipe Calderón and his party since it has long been the home of millions of Mexican nationals, even some U.S. citizens who are allowed to vote in Mexican elections.

California, and other Southwestern states, could be crucial in an election which will decide on the next president Mexico and its congress. Nava is the president of PAN and represents a district in Mexico City. He was accompanied by other party representatives who visited 10 other U.S. cities where they set up booths where Mexican nationals could register their party preference.

Mexican nationals residing legally or illegally in the United States have been allow to vote in their native country’s elections from U.S. territory since 2006. While votes by Mexicans living in the U.S. were said to be crucial to Calderon’s disputed victory, the mail-in ballot procedure was widely criticized. Whether the confusing method will be reformed remains to be seen.

PAN is looking to increase its membership, having now secured two historic presidential victories from the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which had been virtually unchallenged for 60 years. Vicente Fox, a former Coca Cola executive and governor of the State of Guanajuato, was the first PANista president elected. According to PAN, the party has enrolled 161,000 new members during its international membership drive. It counts among its new members singer Mariana Ochoa, actor Alfredo Adame, and the professional masked ‘lucha libre’ wrestler known only as 'Atlantis.'

PAN was spanked hard during the 2009 congressional election by the PRI and Congressman Nava’s trip is seen by some as an effort to recover party losses. President Calderón’s ongoing war with narcotraffickers, the downturn in the economy and accompanying drop in money remitted home by Mexicans working in the U.S., have all been factors in a drop in PAN’s numbers.

Currently, the governor of the State of Mexico, the independent jurisdiction that envelops the autonomous Mexico City, is an apparent favorite of the PRI. Governor Enrique Peña is frequently heralded on television and other media. In former times, such attention given to an undeclared presidential candidate was referred to as the “dedazo” – the pointing out of the party elite’s preferred candidate to be weighed by the masses.