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By KELIN DILLON

The official campaigns for Mexico’s upcoming June 2021 midterm elections kicked off in the wee hours of Sunday, April 4, as 21,000 official government seats are up for the vote.

Due to the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, the electoral process has looked a little different this year, with many candidates opting to hold virtual rallies to maintain social distancing measures, while others held in-person campaign events in the heart of their respective electoral districts to an audience of thousands.

National Action Party (PAN) candidate for governor of Chihuahua, María Eugenia Campos Galván, who recently made headlines for allegedly accepting more than 9 million pesos worth of bribes, began her campaign in the city of Chihuahua with an in-person rally accompanied by PAN leader Marko Cortés.

“We send a strong and clear message to Maru: No one is going to stop her,” said Cortés at the rally, addressing the candidate’s recent scandal. “What does not kill, strengthens.”

Candidate for Sinaloa governorship Mario Zamora Gastélum, running as part of the Go for Sinaloa coalition, started his campaign off at the state’s General Hospital of Guasave, highlighting frontline workers and the battles they fought throughout the pandemic. Meanwhile, his opponent from the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), Rubén Rocha Moya, echoing similar sentiments from his president, spoke on how politicians can combat corruption with honesty.

In Zacatecas, Claudia Anaya Mota of the Party of Institutional Revolution (PRI) started off her campaign for governorship with an array of fireworks and the promise of women becoming “the pillar of the future government” in Mexico. Her opponent from the Labor Party (PT), David Monreal Ávila, opted to hold off on the start of his campaign until the end of the holiday weekend.

Morena-PT hopeful candidate Raúl Morón, running for governor of Michoacán, filed a lawsuit to protect his electoral rights against the Electoral Institute of Michoacán (IEM), after the National Electoral Institute (INE) suspended his campaign due to illegal nondisclosure of pre-campaign funds.

And in Querétaro, the only state in which no candidate is running under a multi-party coalition, 10 candidates began their quest to be voted into the state’s governorship, seven of them being women and the other three being men.

…April 6, 2021