Mexican elections besieged by drug violence

CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico - More than a dozen Mexican states held elections Sunday after campaigning besieged by assassinations and scandals that displayed drug cartels' power. The party that ruled Mexico for 71 years hoped to capitalise on frustrations over the bloodshed and gain momentum in its bid to regain the presidency in two years.

The elections for 12 governors, 14 state legislatures and mayors in 15 states are the biggest political challenge yet for the government of President Felipe Calderon, who is deploying troops and federal police to wrest back territory from drug traffickers.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party, which held on to power for seven decades through a system of largess and corruption that many considered a quasi-dictatorship, has recovered popularity amid frustration with Mexico's surging drug gang violence.

The party, known as the PRI, held up the assassination of its gubernatorial candidate in the northern state of Tamaulipas as evidence Calderon has failed to bring security despite the presence of tens of thousands of troops in drug trafficking hot spots.

Leaders of Calderon's conservative National Action Party, in turn, have insinuated the PRI protects drug traffickers in Tamaulipas, the birthplace of the Gulf cartel, and in the northern state of Sinaloa, the cradle of the cartel by the same name.

A new scandal enveloped outgoing Tamaulipas Gov. Eugenio Hernandez: On Sunday, federal prosecutors said they were questioning one of his bodyguards, Ismael Ortega Galicia, after the newspaper Reforma reported that the US Treasury Department has listed the man as a key member of the Gulf or Zeta drug gangs. The former allies split this year and are fighting for turf in Tamaulipas.

Tamaulipas Public Safety director Jose Soberon said Mexican federal prosecutors had previously investigated Ortega and found no evidence against him. Officials at the Attorney General's Office said they had no immediate information on that claim.

Soberon also said Ortega had travelled to the US several times with the governor and had never been detained, despite the US Treasury Department listing.

Rodolfo Torre, the governor's hand-picked successor, was killed Monday along with four companions when gunmen ambushed his campaign caravan. The day before, he had pledged to make a security a priority, and supporters say that may have been what got him killed.

The PRI chose his brother, Egidio Torres, to run in his place. The new candidate arrived to vote in an elementary school wearing a bulletproof vest and escorted by heavily armed federal police in two trucks and a dozen bodyguards.

Turnout was thin in Tamaulipas, where dozens of poll workers quit in the last week, many because they were afraid to show up at voting stations. Low turnout was widely expected to benefit the PRI, which is more adept at mobilizing voters in the state.

Fernando Larranaga, voting in the same elementary school as Torre, said he remained loyal to the PRI and hoped the new candidate would fulfil his brother's promises of fighting poverty.

"They are trying to destabilise the government," Larranaga said. "Things are not the same. You are afraid to go out into the streets, but life must go on."

Voting lines also were short in Ciudad Juarez - across the border from El Paso, Texas - which has become one of the deadliest places in the world.

"Maybe people are scared and that's why they haven't come out to vote," said Arturo Gonzalez, a president of one nearly empty voting centre in the city.

One elderly woman said she decided to vote at the last minute. "We saw on the television that everything was calm so we came quickly but we're leaving now," she said, refusing to give her name as she hurried home.

Former Ciudad Juarez Mayor Hector Murguia of the PRI was expected to win a new term despite facing allegations of drug ties ever since the director of police operations in his first administration was sentenced in 2008 to prison in Texas for facilitating marijuana smuggling. Murguia denies any links to organised crime.

Four bodies were hung early Sunday from bridges in Chihuahua city, the capital of the state that includes Ciudad Juarez. Police took them down before daybreak.

Calderon's National Action has allied with leftist parties to try to oust the PRI from some of its strongholds.

Among those is the small central state of Hidalgo, where tensions rose after state police raided a house where campaign workers were monitoring the election for National Action gubernatorial candidate Xochitl Galvez.

Police detained 12 people, including two with weapons, Hidalgo Attorney General Jose Rodriguez told Milenio television. He said police raided the house after receiving an anonymous tip from a neighbour that armed men were nearby.

Galvez called the raid as political intimidation.

The left-right alliance is also hoping to oust the PRI from its longtime bastion in Sinaloa.

The PRI gubernatorial candidate, Jesus Vizcarra, has long faced allegations of ties to the cartel led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's most-wanted drug lord.

Reforma recently published a photograph of Vizcarra attending a party many years ago with El Chapo's second-in-command, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada. Vizcarra, the mayor of state capital Culiacan and a distant relative of slain drug trafficker Ines Calderon, has dodged questions about whether Zambada is the godfather of one of his children.

- AP