MEXICO CITY (AP) — Claudia Sheinbaumwho will be Mexico’s first female leader in the country’s more than two hundred years of independence, won the presidency by promising continuity.
The 61-year-old former mayor of Mexico City and lifelong leftist waged a disciplined campaign that capitalized on her predecessor’s popularity before emerging victorious on Sunday, an official quick count showed. But now that her victory is in sight, Mexicans will be watching to see how Sheinbaum, a very different personality from mentor and current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will stand up for herself.
Although she was politically close to López Obrador and shares many of his ideas about the role of government in tackling inequality, she is seen as less combative and more data-driven.
Sheinbaum’s background is in science. She has a Ph.D. in the field of energy technology. Her brother is a physicist. In a 2023 interview with The Associated Press, Sheinbaum said, “I believe in science.”
Observers say this support was reflected in Sheinbaum’s actions as mayor during the COVID-19 pandemic, when her city of some 9 million took a different approach than López Obrador advocated nationally.
While the federal government downplayed the importance of testing for the coronavirus, Mexico City expanded its testing regimen. Sheinbaum imposed limits on business hours and capacity as the virus spread rapidly, even as López Obrador wanted to avoid measures that would hurt the economy. And she publicly wore protective masks and urged social distancing, while the president still mingled with the crowd.
Mexico’s continued high levels of violence will be one of her most immediate challenges after she takes power on October 1. During her campaign, she said little more than that she would expand the quasi-military National Guard created by López Obrador and continue his strategy of continuing. addressing social issues that make so many young Mexicans easy targets for cartel recruitment.
“Let’s be clear, it does not mean an iron fist, wars or authoritarianism,” Sheinbaum said of her approach to criminal gangs at her latest campaign event. “We will promote a strategy to address the causes and continue the pursuit of zero impunity.”
Sheinbaum has praised López Obrador effusively and said little that the president himself has not said. She blamed neoliberal economic policies for condemning millions of people to poverty, promised a strong welfare state and praised Mexico’s major state oil company Pemex, while also promising to emphasize clean energy.
“For me, being from the left has to do with guaranteeing minimum rights for all residents,” Sheinbaum told the AP last year.
Unlike López Obrador, who seemed to relish his very public battles with other branches of government as well as the news media, Sheinbaum is expected by many observers to be less combative or at least more selective in choosing her battles.
“It seems like she’s going in a different direction,” said Ivonne Acuña Murillo, a political scientist at Iberoamerican University. “I don’t know how much.”
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