Dem
51
GOP
49
Mexico holds its elections on Sundays, which makes it easier for many people to vote. Makes sense to us. Yesterday the presidential election resulted in a landslide victory for Claudia Sheinbaum, the first woman to lead the country in its more than 200 years of independence.
Sheinbaum is a leftist, like her mentor and the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Sheinbaum stuck closely to his popular program. Among other things, she supports programs that help the elderly and the poor. She also wants the Supreme Court justices to be elected by popular vote. Sheinbaum was formerly mayor of Mexico City. She's clearly got something that eluded Rudy Giuliani in 2008. Mexican presidents serve a single 6-year term. They cannot be reelected.
Sheinbaum is not your standard garden-variety politician. She has a Ph.D. in energy engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico but her doctoral research was largely done at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in California. She has written over 100 published papers and two books on the environment and sustainable development, mostly in English. She is strongly in favor of policies to remediate climate change. Given the issues on the border between the U.S. and Mexico, we would not be surprised if Joe Biden invited her to the White House fairly soon. Being on good terms with the U.S. president is generally a plus for Mexican politicians. It is not hard to envision a deal between the two countries. The U.S. could provide funds and equipment to beef up border security between Mexico and Guatemala. After all, Mexico doesn't want Central Americans pouring into their country, either. (V)