Mexico City--A foul-mouthed rancher nicknamed "El Bronco" shook up Mexico's midterm elections, riding a wave of discontent with political parties to become the first independent to win a governorship.
The victory of Jaime Rodriguez Calderon in the industrial northern state of Nuevo Leon was the biggest surprise in Sunday's elections for the lower chamber of Congress, hundreds of mayors and nine governors.
"Nuevo Leon will be the beginning of a second Mexican revolution," Rodriguez, 57, told a crowd of supporters in the prosperous city of Monterrey late Sunday.
"It's great that we will give the parties that had been governing a six-year vacation," he said, referring to the length of the governor's term.
While Rodriguez triumphed in his state, President Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) retained its simple majority in the 500-member lower chamber of Congress despite the leader's low approval ratings.
But Rodriguez, who used choice words during the campaign against political parties and their corruption scandals, trounced his opponents.
He won nearly 49 percent of the vote, compared to 23.6 percent for the candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and 22.5 percent for the conservative National Action Party (PAN), according to a tally with nearly 100 percent of votes counted.
"This is the most important result of the election because it has long-term political repercussions," said Luis Carlos Ugalde, a former president of the electoral institute and founder of the political consultancy Integralia Consultores.
AFP
