An increasing number of political sources confirm that it would now take a miracle for the National Action Party (PAN) to recover lost ground and triumph in the Jalisco gubernatorial race and the Guadalajara metro-area mayorships.
Why is the PAN’s campaign faltering so badly, especially that of 56-year-old Fernando Guzman, who hopes to be the right-of-center party’s fourth consecutive governor?
The uncomfortable truth for Guzman is that he is running third in many polls, behind both the youthful Aristoteles Sandoval of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the maverick and energetic Enrique Alfaro of the Citizen’s Movement, who is striking a chord with the state’s youth, partly due to his insistence on major improvements and investment in the underachieving educational system.
A hastily organized debate among four of the five candidates held in the city’s UNIVA university this week – Sandoval passed up on the invitation – demonstrated Alfaro’s growing appeal: he was cheered on his every intervention, while Guzman’s comments were met with almost stony silence.
Guzman’s problem – much like his right-wing Republican counterparts in the United States – is that he preaches to the converted: mostly comfortably-off, middle-class, practicing Catholics. Closely aligned with the business elite, he is a hesitant political chameleon, often appearing ill at ease in the company of the popular classes. His message that PAN administrations have brought two decades of economic and social stability is sincere but unconvincing to the thousands without regular employment and resigned to working in the shadows of the underground economy.
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