Story and Photo by Reuters | The Economist | SEP. 2, 2023
Claudia Sheinbaum closed her campaign to be the presidential candidate of Mexico’s ruling party, Morena, promising continuity. “No steps back, nor steps to the right, only continuing the transformation,” she shouted on stage in the city of Verácruz on August 27th. Ms Sheinbaum is positioning herself as the person who will pick up the torch from President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose six-year term is coming to an end, if she wins the general election next June.
First she must secure her spot as Morena’s candidate; the result of the party’s selection process will be announced on September 6th. The 61-year-old former mayor of Mexico City (a position equivalent to a state governor) has a strong lead in the polls, thanks in part to obvious, if implicit, support from Mr López Obrador. Ms Sheinbaum is almost certain to beat her closest rival, Marcelo Ebrard, a former foreign minister. And Morena’s dominance of Mexico’s politics means that, failing a major upset, she will be the country’s next president. That would make her its first female, and first Jewish, head of state.
Ms Sheinbaum grew up in a middle-class family in the capital, the daughter of two scientists who were active in the student protests of 1968(which had the same pro-democracy tenor as those sweeping much of the rest of the world). She studied physics before completing a doctorate in environmental engineering at one of Mexico’s top universities. She joined Morena when Mr López Obrador founded it in 2014, and served as his minister for the environment when he was mayor of the capital.
She shares much of the president’s ideology: a mixture of left-wing ideas, such as increasing social handouts, and nationalist ones, such as favouring state-owned companies over the private sector.
Between July 2018 and June 2023 Ms Sheibaum ran Mexico City herself. Her record there suggests she would be a less ideological and more competent president than her mentor. Under her tenure murder rates in the city fell more quickly than the national figure, and she handled the pandemic far better. Her environmental background suggests that she is unlikely to continue Mr López Obrador’s prioritisation of fossil fuels over clean energy. She has substance and conviction, if not always the charisma of most politicians at her level. But only when she emerges from Mr López Obrador’s shadow will Mexicans see what she is made of.
