VZCZCXRO7867
PP RUEHCD RUEHGD RUEHMC RUEHNG RUEHNL RUEHRD RUEHRS RUEHTM
DE RUEHHO #0029/01 0210118
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 210118Z JAN 06
FM AMCONSUL HERMOSILLO
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 1246
INFO RUEHME/AMEMBASSY MEXICO PRIORITY 0357
RUEHXC/ALL US CONSULATES IN MEXICO COLLECTIVE
RUEHHO/AMCONSUL HERMOSILLO 1604

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 HERMOSILLO 000029 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR WHA/MEX, EMBASSY MEXICO FOR MCCA, POL 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM MX
SUBJECT: SONORA PRI AND PAN PARTIES PREPARE FOR 2006 ELECTIONS 
 
HERMOSILLO 00000029  001.2 OF 002 
 
 
¶1. (SBU)  Summary.  Electoral politics are beginning to grab the 
local headlines in Sonora.   In a state where the National 
Action Party (PAN) is strongest, Institutional Revolutionary 
Party (PRI) Governor Bours has visibly asserted his local 
political identity and independence from the PRI national 
presidential candidate Robert Madrazo.  He is backing an 
initiative with the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) to ensure 
local control over selection of PRI candidates for Sonora 
electoral contests.  The Sonora PAN party also is maneuvering to 
dominate the selection of its candidates for key local campaigns 
rather than take direction from the national party.  Internal 
PAN friction over the candidate for mayor of Hermosillo, the 
capital, is especially intense.  Sonora PAN leaders say they are 
open to cooperation with the The Party of the Democratic 
Revolution (PRD) to thwart a Madrazo victory and return of PRI 
to the presidency.  End Summary. 
 
GOVERNOR BOURS AND PRI POLITICS IN SONORA 
 
¶2. (U) Jockeying for position in the July 2 Mexican national 
elections is well underway in Sonora.  Governor Eduardo Bours 
Castelo, elected in 2000 as a member of PRI, has not endorsed 
the PRI's 2006 presidential candidate, Roberto Madrazo.  He 
also, characteristically, is asserting his independence from the 
national PRI party leadership by strongly supporting the efforts 
of the Sonora PRI party to gain local control over selection of 
the PRI candidates for Sonora's federal deputy and senator 
positions.  This effort is in the form of a challenge in IFE to 
the validity of the national-level PRI coalition with the Green 
Ecology Party (PVEM).  Although no decision has been made on the 
final formula for candidate selection, local media are 
portraying the Sonora PRI's initiative as moving ahead after IFE 
agreed on January 10 to refer its complaint to the Electoral 
Tribunal of Judicial Power (Tepjf). 
 
¶3. (U) The Sonora PRI challenge attacks a national-level 
PRI-PVEM agreement to cooperate in the election campaign 
(reportedly, inter alia, on selection of candidates) as 
"anti-democratic and centralist." Governor Bours' role is 
consistent with his long-time political projection of himself as 
a leader of a "PRI of Change" or the "New PRI." However, some 
Hermosillo political observers explain the maneuver as the 
latest manifestation of a decades-old political rivalry between 
Bours and Manlio Fabio Beltrones.  Beltrones, who was PRI state 
governor in 1991-96, currently represents the interests of PRI's 
Madrazo faction in Sonora. 
 
¶4. (U) Governor Bours set off speculation -- which is still 
reverberating locally -- that he might even break with PRI when 
he met January 10 in Mexico City with Josefina Vasquez Mota, the 
political coordinator for  PAN presidential candidate Felipe 
Calderon.  But the Governor has strongly denied that is his 
intention.  He has said that Vasquez Mota is an old friend and 
they simply discussed the importance of clean elections and the 
need for continuing political reform in Mexico. 
 
MANAGING PAN SONORA INTERNAL PARTY TENSIONS 
 
¶5.  (U) Different factions of National Action Party (PAN) in 
Sonora are also engaged in fierce competition for control over 
the selection of local PAN candidates, especially who will stand 
for PAN in the contest for mayor of Hermosillo, the capital of 
Sonora.  Mayor Maria Dolores del Rio, the PAN incumbent, has 
united her supporters behind the "pre-candidacy" of Rodolfo 
Flores Hurtado, who works with her in city hall.  Flores Hurtado 
faces internal PAN competition from Javier Gandara Magana, a 
prominent and wealthy agricultural exporter, who switched from 
PRI to PAN in a failed attempt to become Hermosillo mayor in 
¶2003.  Gandara Magana has the backing of Manuel Espino 
Barrientos, the PAN national leader. 
 
¶6.  (SBU) PAN Sonora party officials Enrique Reina Lizarraga ( 
State Leader) and Irma Romo Salazar (Secretary General) recently 
told PO that they are trying to keep the Flores Hurtado-Gandara 
Magana competition from weakening local party unity (although 
they indicated that Flores Hurtado would be their preferred 
candidate).   PAN is very strong in Sonora and currently holds 
11 (of 31) seats in the Sonora State Congress, and  23 (of 72) 
mayoralties throughout the state, including Hermosillo.  At the 
Federal level, the two elected senators from Sonora are from 
PAN.  Sonora has 7 (of 300) elected deputies in the National 
Congress of Deputies.  Three of those federal deputies from 
Sonora are PANistas. 
 
¶7.  (SBU) Romo Salazar said she expects PAN to achieve similar 
support in Sonora in 2006, although she expressed continuing 
concern about the negative influence of Jorge Humberto Valencia 
Valencia, a PRI supporter and President of Sonora's State 
Electoral Council (CEE) on a clean vote count (Reftel).  She 
 
HERMOSILLO 00000029  002.2 OF 002 
 
 
said that the 2006 campaign in Sonora would be a tough one, even 
under the best of conditions, noting that the organizations with 
the most extensive networks in the state are still CocaCola, the 
Church, and PRI.  The PRD, she said, could do well in 2006 in 
southern Sonora, a generally poorer portion of the state, and 
draw votes from PRI. 
 
SONORA PAN LEADERS' VIEWS ON THE NATIONAL RACE 
 
¶8. (SBU) The Sonora PAN leaders were enthusiastic about Felipe 
Calderon, their party's presidential candidate, but said that 
the main objective on the national level is to keep Madrazo and 
the PRI from the presidency.  A Madrazo win, they said, would 
result in a setback to democratic gains for the whole country. 
They said that PAN and the PRD could cooperate to block that 
outcome.   Interestingly, they commented that PRD presidential 
hopeful Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), despite his leftist 
and sometimes anti-American rhetoric, is actually more moderate 
and could be expected to act "responsibly" as president if he 
won. 
CLARKE