Challenger in Mexico election threatens 71-year reign by PRI

 BY RICARDO SANDOVAL
 Herald World Staff

 MEXICO CITY -- This week's debate among Mexico's presidential candidates has
 yielded a startling possibility: The political party that has been in power for the
 last 71 years really might lose the July 2 election.

 That's how well conservative opposition candidate Vicente Fox did in the debate
 Tuesday night.

 But to become the first president since 1929 from outside the Institutional
 Revolutionary Party (PRI), Fox must contend with the formidable political machine
 built by the ruling party. And its secret weapon is the millions of poor people in
 the countryside who probably did not see Fox's performance Tuesday night
 against the five other presidential candidates, because most of Mexico's rural
 poor don't have TVs.

 In quick public opinion surveys of the television audience, Fox, nominee of the
 National Action Party (PAN), was declared the winner by about 45 percent, more
 than twice the number who said the debate was won by PRI nominee Francisco
 Labastida or Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the leftist Party of the Democratic
 Revolution (PRD).

 Fox, a former Coca-Cola executive and governor of Guanajuato state, scored
 points by lashing out at the record of the long-ruling PRI and of Labastida, a
 former interior secretary and state governor.

 The other three candidates -- Porfirio Muñoz Ledo of the Authentic Party of the
 Mexican Revolution, Manuel Camacho Solis of the Democratic Center Party and
 Gilberto Rincon Gallardo of the Social Democratic Party -- polled in low single
 digits.

 ``Forget about it,'' said Louis Harris pollster Vicente Licona, whose firm did a
 quick telephone poll in the Valley of Mexico, the populous central area that
 includes Mexico City. ``The next Mexican president is Fox.''

 Analysts say the questions surrounding Fox include whether he can look
 presidential and prove to average Mexicans that a change in leadership is a real
 possibility. And whether he can assure U.S. politicians -- who tend to be leery of
 political instability in America's most important trading partner -- that a
 presidential transition from the PRI can be orderly.

 At most, 30 million Mexicans saw Tuesday's debate, observers say, while nearly
 59 million people are registered to vote July 2. A Labastida advisor, who asked
 not to be identified, cautioned reporters Tuesday not to heed the quick telephone
 surveys, because many Labastida supporters ``can't be counted in this way,
 because they don't have telephones.''

 Only about 40 percent of Mexicans have direct access to a phone.

 Surveys generally show that in the minds of many of Mexico's rural poor,
 Labastida is still most likely to be the next president.

 ``The poor represent a big problem for Fox,'' said Daniel Lund, director of Mundos,
 a Mexico City-based opinion research company.

 How Fox handles this challenge in the next few days will be crucial to his
 chances in July, political analysts said.

 Perhaps Fox -- who owns a ranch in Guanajuato and sells leather boots-- had that
 in mind Tuesday when he urged rural Mexicans to elect a president ``who's from
 the farm. Who knows farming. Not some bureaucrat who doesn't even know how
 to milk a cow.''