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11/16/2005:

"A Rancorous Primary Leaves 3-Way Race to Lead Mexico"

The former mayor of Mexico City, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 52, was the only candidate not to face any challenge within his party, the liberal Democratic Revolutionary Party. His rivals folded earlier this year after Mr. López Obrador successfully beat back attempts by the two other parties to torpedo his candidacy with a charge that he had ignored a court order.

His main pledge has been to expand public works projects and to provide free health care and cash subsidies to the elderly, as he did in the capital. He has painted his opponents as captives of the same network of big business leaders and machine politicians who held power here for most of the 20th century. Rejecting an expensive media campaign, he has promised a grass-roots movement to galvanize voters from the lower and middle classes, from which polls say his supporters come.

Indeed, he has been touring the country by car, giving speeches in every town along the route, like the old whistle-stop campaigns in the United States.

"I think what's needed is a true purification of public life, a sharp renovation, and this has to take place from below toward the top," he said in a recent interview on Televisa. "That's why I do these meetings, these encounters with the people."
nytimes.com