Mexico City will be governed by the Morena party for another six years after Clara Brugada Molina won the mayoral election in the capital on Sunday, according to preliminary results.
Brugada, who also represented the Labor Party and the Green Party, attracted over 50% of the vote, more than 10 points clear of PAN-PRI-PRD candidate Santiago Taboada, who had the support of just under 40% of voters.
Salomón Chertorivski of the Citizens Movement party was in a distant third place with about 7% of the vote.
Clara Brugada, a former mayor of the Mexico City borough of Itzapalapa, took to social media to acknowledge her victory.
“Based on the results issued by the electoral authority, the trend is clear: the majority of the people of this city want the transformation to continue,” she said in a post to X in the early hours of Monday.
The “transformation” she was referring to is the so-called “fourth transformation” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asserts his government is undertaking in Mexico. Claudia Sheinbaum, who won Sunday’s presidential election in a landslide, has pledged to build on that transformation.
With her victory, Brugada will assume one of Mexico’s most powerful political positions — and is already a key ally of the new president.
Previous Mexico City mayors include Sheinbaum, who stepped down a year ago to focus on the presidential election, and López Obrador, who was in office in the capital between 2000 and 2005 before launching the first of his three presidential bids.
Felicidades querida @ClaudiaShein por escribir una página más de la historia y convertirte en la primera Presidenta de México. Estoy segura que continuarás el legado de nuestro gran presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
¡Contigo, llegamos todas!#ClaudiaPresidenta… pic.twitter.com/50vOHEmCUd
— Clara Brugada Molina (@ClaraBrugadaM) June 3, 2024
Sheinbaum won the 2018 Mexico City mayoral election for Morena, ending the long-running rule of the Democractic Revolution Party (PRD) in the capital. López Obrador, former foreign affairs minister Marcelo Ebrard and Senator Miguel Ángel Mancera all represented the PRD when they were mayors of Mexico City earlier this century.
Brugada, who was selected as Morena’s candidate in the capital despite finishing second in the party’s internal selection contest, is perhaps best known for her “utopía” community center projects in Iztapalapa, which provide free athletic, recreation and education opportunities in the disadvantaged borough.
During her campaign, she pledged to establish 100 additional utopías across the capital’s 15 other boroughs if she succeeded in becoming mayor.
One of the key challenges she will face after she is sworn in on Oct. 5 is guaranteeing ongoing water supply for the capital.
Brugada has pledged to create a water-focused ministry in Mexico City, expand the capital’s rainwater harvesting program and establish a new program for the “rehabilitation” of 11 water sources, among other measures.
She has also said she will allocate “billions of pesos” to water projects in the capital, where many residents don’t have running water in their homes and depend on deliveries from trucks known as pipas.
Security and transport will be other key issues for Brugada, 60, who has also served as a federal and Mexico City lawmaker.
Voters in Mexico City also elected deputies to the capital’s Congress on Sunday. Morena and its allies look set to maintain a majority in the 66-seat unicameral legislature.
Mexico News Daily
