Claudia Sheinbaum said in a press conference on Thursday that family members of candidates should be left out of the 2024 presidential campaign.
This comes after a video surfaced this week in which the son of rival candidate Xóchitl Gálvez is seen in a drunken, semi-belligerent state as he confronts security personnel outside of a club in the affluent Mexico City neighborhood of Polanco.
In the widely disseminated video, said to be from 2023, Juan Pablo Sánchez Gálvez is seen kicking and punching a security guard about twice his size and disrespecting the bouncers with a string of homophobic vulgarities when they refuse to let him pass.
“My position is to leave the children out of it,” Sheinbaum said during a campaign stop in Aguascalientes. “Those of us who are in the race are the candidates, and the focus should be on the issues.”
“So I do not agree with whoever posted this video, and it should not be used as part of the race.”
Sheinbaum, the race’s frontrunner, is the candidate for the Let’s Keep Making History coalition, composed of the ruling Morena party with the Labor Party (PT) and the Ecological Green Party of Mexico (PVEM).
Gálvez is representing Strength and Heart for Mexico, an alliance of the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).
The third candidate in the race is Jorge Álvarez Máynez of the Citizens Movement (MC) party.
All three will be participating in their first debate this Sunday in Mexico City.
Not much is known about Sánchez Gálvez, including his age. He is the younger of Xóchitl Gálvez’s two children and reportedly earned a business administration degree at Mexico City’s Ibero-American University from 2019 to 2023.
He had been in charge of engaging young voters in his mother’s campaign, but he resigned that position on Wednesday.
After the video surfaced, Sánchez Gálvez uploaded an apology to the social media network X. In it, he explains that since the incident he has worked “to be a better person” and will continue to support his mother.
“A video is circulating where unfortunately I am in a very bad condition,” he says. “First of all I want to apologize to all the people I have offended. At the time, I apologized to the club’s security staff and all the club’s staff, and they know it.
“I am here to stand up, recognize my mistakes and assume my responsibility, which is why I have decided to step aside from my position as leader of youth social networks.”
Though President Andrés Manuel López Obrador refused to comment on the situation “to be respectful,” his wife went public and asked that candidates “play fair.”
“Maybe it’s too much to ask. But as a Mexican, I reject that family members continue to be ‘collateral damage,’” she wrote on her social networks, through which she also sent a “hug” to Sánchez Gálvez.
Xóchitl Gálvez did express her gratitude for Gutiérrez’s “words of solidarity” in a Wednesday post to X, but later accused her rivals of starting a “dirty war” after a campaign rally in México state.
“They are going to start a dirty war,” she said. “Since they can’t find anything on me, they are going to try to harm my family.”
