Tatiana Clouthier, a former federal economy minister who currently heads up the Institute for Mexicans Abroad (IME), will seek to represent the Morena party at the 2027 gubernatorial election in the northern state of Nuevo León.
Clouthier revealed her ambition during an interview with journalist and political analyst Fernando Cuevas, saying that while she is currently committed to her work at the IME, she will seek Morena’s nomination when the party commences its candidate selection process.
Tatiana CLouthier anuncia que ira por la Gobernatura de Nuevo León. Esto a través del partido @PartidoMorenaMx pic.twitter.com/KyuD2HBgUx
— Fernando Cuevas (@FerCuevasMur) March 2, 2026
“We will have to raise our hand,” she said.
Clouthier, who served as economy minister from early 2021 to late 2022 in the government of ex-president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said she didn’t know whether Morena would choose to select a female candidate in Nuevo León, as it did for the 2021 gubernatorial election in that state.
The Federal Electoral Tribunal ruled in December 2020 that parties had to nominate women candidates for governor in at least seven of the 15 states where elections were held in 2021.
In 2027, gubernatorial elections will be held in 17 states on June 6. Voters will elect 500 federal deputies on the same date to renew the lower house of Congress.
Current Nuevo León Governor Samuel García, who represents the Citizens’ Movement (MC) party, is barred from seeking a second term.
Morena, which was founded by López Obrador and backed Claudia Sheinbaum at the 2024 presidential election, has a majority in both houses of federal Congress and governs 23 of Mexico’s 32 federal entities. It has never held power in Nuevo León, and that state has never had a female governor.
Clouthier vs. Colosio?
If Clouthier succeeds in winning Morena’s nomination for governor of Nuevo León, one person against whom she could compete for the position is Luis Donaldo Colosio Riojas, son of Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, who was assassinated in Tijuana in 1994 while campaigning as the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate ahead of that year’s presidential election.
Colosio Riojas, an MC senator who served as mayor of Monterrey from 2021 to 2024, said in February that he would seek to represent the Citizens Movement party at a gubernatorial election next year, though he has not decided whether to run in Nuevo León or in Sonora, where he was born.
“It’s certain that I will go for one of the two, but the decision depends on many factors,” he said in a radio interview in mid-February.
García, representing the MC, easily won the 2021 gubernatorial election in Nuevo León, beating the second-placed candidate, Adrian De La Garza Santos of the PRI, by almost nine points. Morena’s candidate, Clara Luz Flores Carrales, placed fourth with just over 14% of the vote.
Clouthier would have to attract a much higher percentage of the vote to become Nuevo León’s first female governor.
Who is Tatiana Clouthier?
Born in Culiacán, Sinaloa, in 1964, Clouthier is the daughter of Leticia Carrillo and Manuel Clouthier, who represented the National Action Party (PAN) at the 1988 presidential election won by Carlos Salinas de Gortari. She was affiliated with the PAN for many years before switching her allegiance to Morena around a decade ago.
Clouthier, a long-term resident of the Monterrey metropolitan area, served as López Obrador’s campaign manager ahead of the 2018 presidential election and subsequently represented Morena in the lower house of Congress between 2018 and 2020. She replaced Graciela Márquez Colín as economy minister in January 2021 and remained in that position until October 2022, when she resigned.
Clouthier is an outspoken supporter of President Sheinbaum, and in 2025 joined her government as head of the IME, a federal agency dedicated to supporting Mexicans who live outside Mexico, chiefly the millions of Mexicans who live in the United States.
Citing “official information,” the newspaper El Financiero reported on Monday that she is the “owner” of a real estate business. Various media reports say that Clouthier is a partner of a family real estate company.
The current IME chief has also worked as a teacher and municipal government official, and served as director of upper secondary education at the Metropolitan University of Monterrey for several years.
With reports from El Financiero
