Mexico’s President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum and newly named Head of the Office of the Presidency Lázaro Cárdenas Batel. Photo: Google

By KELIN DILLON

On Thursday, July 11, Mexico’s President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum named Lázaro Cárdenas Batel as the Head of the Office of the Presidency during a conference held at Mexico City’s Transition House.

Throughout his career in politics, Cárdenas Batel served as both Governor of Michoacán, a special advisor to the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and the coordinator of the president’s advisors, a post he resigned from in 2023.

While announcing Cárdenas’s appointment, Sheinbaum noted she selected the career politician due to his ability to hold dialogue between the executive branch and Mexico’s other government branches – particularly amid the controversy surrounding the National Regeneration Movement’s (Morena) proposed reforms to the nation’s judicial branch.

“Lázaro has the ability to speak with businessmen, with organizations, with people from any social sector,” said Sheinbaum during Thursday’s conference, while also noting his capabilities of conversing with leadership from opposition parties in the case of her absence.

“I have known Lázaro for many years, we are not only colleagues, friends, but he has held very important positions that allow him to coordinate our presidential office,” continued the president-elect. 

Cárdenas affirmed Sheinbaum’s words during the conference, saying that “the presidential office will always maintain effective and respectful coordination and dialogue with everyone, as well as with local authorities, members of other federal branches and the different sectors of society, in compliance with the objectives of the Sheinbaum government, its programs and projects.”

“It’s a great honor for everything that the election of a woman stands for and for everything that her management can mean for our country; not only for women and not only for politics,” added Cárdenas. “I have no doubt that the next government will be consistent with Claudia Sheinbaum’s trajectory and with the causes that she has promoted and defended throughout her life.”

This marks the first time someone has held the position since Alfonso Romo resigned from his post as Head of the Office of the Presidency under  López Obrador back in December 2020.