In Mexico, a choice between change, status quo

MEXICO CITY, Mexico — With official campaigning over, polls indicate a virtual dead heat between the two top contenders at the end of a nasty race for president, a vote that could have important consequences for U.S.-Mexico relations.

"It is going to define the future of the country for many years to come," said Denise Dresser, a political science professor at Mexico City's Instituto Technológico Autónomo (ITAM). "In many ways," Dresser added, "this is about a house divided."

Harvard-Educated Felipe Calderón, 43, the candidate of the National Action Party, the party of current president Vicente Fox, promises continuity in the way Mexico is governed and the way it deals with its neighbors.

"I will be an inclusive president," Calderón told a rally in the western city of Zamora in his home state, promising to meet with his political adversaries if he wins the election.

His chief opponent is Andres Manuel López Obrador, 52, the former mayor of Mexico City. Representing the left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party, López Obrador has campaigned as a populist, saying repeatedly, "We must put the poor first."

"We can't have a rich government at the expense of a poor society," he told a crowd of 8,000 people in the colonial city of Puebla. 

That sort of talk resonates with impoverished Mexicans, but scares many in the business community who fear that he may roll back Fox's free-market policies and hinder foreign investment.

"López Obrador is a danger to Mexico" was an oft-repeated slogan in the Calderón campaign.  But many Mexicans, disappointed at the failure of the Fox government to deliver on promised job growth, could be ready for a change of direction. The deciding factor may be who can turn out the most voters.

Turning out voters
With six million Mexicans between the ages of 18 and 21, both frontrunners have gone out of their way to court the new voters, talking about pot on Spanish-language MTV and appearing with popular sports figures.

But only three out of every 10 people under 30 bothered to vote in the 2003 mid-term elections and a prominent pollster said apathy among the young is widespread.

"Young people, to be crude, have more things to do," said Alejandro Hope of the Group of Economists and Associates, a polling firm. "Because of this abstention, public policy tends to have a pro-old bias."

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