Mexico: How Sheinbaum will follow the AMLO act
Mexican President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum will likely maintain many of her iconoclastic predecessor’s policies, while forging her own path on issues like security and energy.
In a nutshell
- Mexico’s incoming president may temper AMLO’s economic nationalism
- Ms. Sheinbaum will prioritize U.S. ties but avoid shaking up foreign policy
- Mexican democracy will probably not suffer as much as critics fear
On June 2, Claudia Sheinbaum won the presidency in a landslide victory for Mexico’s ruling Movimiento Regeneracion Nacional (Morena). A former mayor of Mexico City, her 59.8 percent of the vote far surpassed the combined totals of conservative candidate Xochitl Galvez (27.5 percent) and leftist Jorge Alvarez Maynez (10.3 percent). It was a significant triumph in multiple ways. Ms. Sheinbaum will be Mexico’s first female president as well as the country’s first Jewish president, and her vote share constitutes the highest winning percentage in Mexican democratic history.
Morena outperformed polls at other levels of government as well. The president’s party and its allies, the Partido del Trabajo (PT) and the Partido Verde Ecologista de Mexico (PVEM), secured a two-thirds majority in the Chamber of Deputies (372 of 500 seats) and fell just two seats short of a two-thirds majority in the Senate (83 of 128 seats). The party’s success continued on the state level, where it won the head of government of Mexico City, six of the eight state governorships in play and supermajorities in 22 of 32 state legislatures.
These results are a testament to the popularity of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (who is also known by his initials, AMLO) and his political project with Morena, known as the “Fourth Transformation.” Ms. Sheinbaum was a strong candidate, to be sure, but her overwhelming margin of victory reflects the public’s endorsement of AMLO and his policies as much as it does support for her own candidacy.
In the regional context, this continuismo is another sign that Latin America’s anti-incumbency moment may have ended. Following the victory of Santiago Pena in Paraguay and the re-elections of Presidents Nayib Bukele in El Salvador and Luis Abinader in the Dominican Republic, Morena’s success marks the fourth victory of a Latin American incumbent party since 2023, after 17 straight defeats in the region going back five years. The reasons for these incumbent successes vary, but, with the exception of Paraguay, Latin American voters seem to have embraced non-traditional parties and anti-system politicians, regardless of their challenger or incumbent status.
How Sheinbaum won
Ms. Sheinbaum and Morena overperformed pre-electoral polls thanks to widespread support for AMLO and his policies, strong party infrastructure and use of state resources for campaigning, and underperformance by the political opposition.
Above all, the election was a referendum on AMLO’s leadership. As noted in a GIS report from 2023, Mr. Lopez Obrador has maintained some of the most favorable public approval ratings in the world, with support that transcends social class and ideology. His plain-spoken populism, anti-elite and anti-press discourse, combined with labor and social policies that significantly benefited the working class, helped him build the country’s dominant political movement. In a country where the president is limited to a single term, voters chose to keep the presidential party in power.
Ms. Sheinbaum’s foreign policy will look a lot like her predecessor’s – albeit with a different, less confrontational tone.
Morena also benefitted from its strong party infrastructure and its use of the state for campaign purposes. The party has grown its influence and network since winning the presidency in 2018, and its coalition already controlled the governorships of two-thirds of the country’s states as well as state legislatures and mayoralties. This was certainly handy. Moreover, in direct challenge to campaign laws, AMLO used mañanitas – his daily press conferences – and control over state resources to openly advocate for and support Ms. Sheinbaum.
Lastly, Morena benefitted from poor coordination and strategy from the fractious Vamos por Mexico opposition coalition, comprised of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), the catch-all Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and the social democratic Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). While AMLO built Morena on an anti-establishment platform, Vamos por Mexico represented the country’s three traditional political parties and, at least as portrayed by the president, the interests of Mexico’s political and economic elites. Compounding this issue of optics, these opposition parties have been weakened since 2018, and they failed to put forward a clear alternative platform and vision beyond opposing the current president.
In the short term
Until at least the 2027 midterm elections, Morena’s majority in both chambers of Congress all but guarantees success for President-elect Sheinbaum’s legislative priorities. This will allow the party to pass constitutional reforms without the need for opposition support – a feat that eluded Mr. Lopez Obrador throughout his presidency. Ms. Sheinbaum will, however, face some constraints from her predecessor. AMLO will continue to control Morena and hold leverage at the subnational level, and his policy preferences will undoubtedly cast a shadow over Ms. Sheinbaum’s agenda.
At the same time, Ms. Sheinbaum will not simply be a carbon copy of AMLO. She is also a skilled politician with a doctorate in environmental engineering who holds her own policy preferences, and she is anxious to put her own stamp on Mexican politics.
Economically, this means a “Mexico first” brand of economic nationalism already familiar to voters. Ms. Sheinbaum is pro-business and wishes to attract foreign investment, but her government is likely to favor Mexican firms over foreign ones. This may include tariffs on foreign goods. However, in terms of energy policy, the president-elect is a true believer in renewable energy and will seek foreign investment in both renewables and energy transmission. She may also prioritize a shift toward sustainable development and environmental protection.
Security policy will remain a major challenge for the country and a priority for the incoming president. Ms. Sheinbaum is likely to dispense with the pretense of AMLO’s “hugs, not bullets” rhetoric as she pursues a recalibrated law-and-order approach to organized crime. This is also likely to include some type of security reform as well as cooperation and coordination with key United States law enforcement agencies – something she did with great success during her tenure as mayor of Mexico City. Similar effectiveness as president would further entrench her and her party in power.
Ms. Sheinbaum and AMLO have similar outlooks on foreign affairs, and the president-elect’s foreign policy will look a lot like her predecessor’s – albeit with a different, less confrontational tone. Ms. Sheinbaum will prioritize strong trade relations with the U.S. to bolster the domestic economy, enforce a restrictive immigration policy toward Central America to protect the labor market and will be more cooperative on security issues. She would probably be more of an ally to a Democratic administration than AMLO was to President Joe Biden, but she would also be better equipped for a more transactional foreign policy with a Trump White House, under which immigration would be a key point of contention. Geopolitically, Ms. Sheinbaum is not likely to alter Mexico’s Venezuela policy, ally the country with Ukraine or oppose Russia or China.
The success of this political project will determine whether Ms. Sheinbaum keeps her legislative majorities and emerges with a mandate of her own after the 2027 midterms, or if AMLO retains control of the local party machines and national policy.
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Scenarios
President-elect Sheinbaum’s mandate is to maintain and expand AMLO’s policies. Although she also faces most of the same problems as the outgoing president did – a stagnant economy, a daunting security situation, extraordinary levels of violence, consolidated organized criminal groups and a polarized society – she also has a more measured, less antagonistic governing style than Mr. Lopez Obrador, which should result in noticeable differences in the way the country is run.
Most likely: Continuity with independence on key issues
Ms. Sheinbaum is a pragmatist. As such, by far the most likely scenario under her government is continuity with many of AMLO’s policies combined with a reform agenda on key issues like security, economics, and energy and the environment – especially as her term progresses. The appointment of Omar Garcia Harfuch as public security minister, for instance, suggests that Ms. Sheinbaum will continue the Mexican government’s militarized approach to crime while strengthening the state’s intelligence and investigative capabilities. Mr. Harfuch served as public security minister in Mexico City while Ms. Sheinbaum was mayor, and oversaw a large reduction in homicides during his four years there.
She will strike a similar balance in economic policy, between AMLO’s nationalist approach and an imperative to seek foreign investment. And regarding energy and the environment, Ms. Sheinbaum is a former climate scientist who will seek to honor campaign pledges to protect the country’s energy sovereignty, while also preparing Mexico for the global transition toward green energy and place greater policy emphasis on environmental protections. Across all of these policy dimensions, Mr. Lopez Obrador will maintain a supportive role and continue to pull many of the levers of the Morena political machine, but Ms. Sheinbaum will not have to rely on him to push her own national agenda.
President-elect Sheinbaum’s cabinet picks are the strongest indication that she is pursuing this path of moderation. They reflect a balance between figures loyal to Ms. Sheinbaum and those who represent a degree of continuity with the current administration, with AMLO administration heavyweights like Marcelo Ebrard, a one-time rival of Ms. Sheinbaum, taking on key roles. At the same time, they also reveal the incoming president’s personal emphasis on technocracy, placing Alicia Barcena – who replaced Mr. Ebrard as AMLO’s foreign minister – as the minister of environment and natural resources. The new Ministry of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation will be headed by Rosaura Ruiz, who was part of Ms. Sheinbaum’s cabinet in Mexico City.
In this scenario, Mexican democracy may experience slight erosion, but less than under Mr. Lopez Obrador and much less than critics of the president-elect fear. Ms. Sheinbaum will work to consolidate Morena’s national presence and authority, but will be less overt at attaching and dismantling independent checks on executive power. She will support Mr. Lopez Obrador’s controversial constitutional reforms to elect supreme court justices by popular vote, but is less likely to independently pursue similar additional measures.
Less likely: AMLO’s puppet
It is possible, however, that Ms. Sheinbaum plays the role of puppet, as many of her critics allege. This would involve decisions like doubling down on economic statism and security policy militarization without reform, while following Mr. Lopez Obrador’s lead in undermining Mexican democracy. Indeed, as president, AMLO dismantled checks and balances, weakened autonomous institutions such as the National Electoral Institute and seized discretionary control of the budget. He was also openly hostile to the press. For her part, President-elect Sheinbaum has already declared that she will continue AMLO’s mañanitas.
In this scenario, Ms. Sheinbaum could use her near-supermajority in congress to pursue additional constitutional reforms that weaken checks and balances, while continuing to reap the electoral benefits of a political machinery built on patronage and clientelism – molding Mexico into a de facto single-party state like the PRI-dominated period of 1929-2000.
As stated above, however, Ms. Sheinbaum’s technocratic background and experience as mayor of Mexico City suggest that she is not merely an AMLO proxy, and that she is not as interested as Mr. Lopez Obrador in turning Morena into a new version of the old PRI.
Least likely: Breaking free
The least likely scenario is one in which Ms. Sheinbaum breaks totally free from her predecessor, exercising independence to reverse many of AMLO’s policies. She knows that AMLO’s popularity is responsible for the margin of her electoral victory and that most Mexicans want more of the same. As such, it would be politically risky for her to deviate too much from these policies – at least early in her term.
This scenario becomes more likely after the midterm elections or if Ms. Sheinbaum is able to cultivate a degree of political popularity independent of AMLO. However, even then, she and AMLO share many policy perspectives and there are no real indications that she intends to pursue a reform agenda that breaks completely with her predecessor.
