Mexico’s ruling party warms to first outsider candidate

José Antonio Meade Kuribreña (Photo by PresidenciaMX 2012-2018 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0)

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party is so battered in the polls that most of its top leaders agreed Sunday that it should turn for the first time to an outsider to be its presidential candidate.

The party known as the PRI governed Mexico for most of the last century, and for all of the past five years. But sagging polls standings due to violence, corruption, high inflation and weak economic growth haves the PRI looking to Jose Antonio Meade, a former treasury secretary who is not a party member.

Meade got the support of most of the party’s leaders at an event Sunday at which he registered to seek the party’s presidential nomination for next July’s election. He is all but guaranteed the nomination, after his only real competition — former Yucatan state Gov.

Ivonne Ortega — said Saturday that she wouldn’t compete and would instead back Meade.

Far from distancing himself from the PRI, Meade has embraced unfashionable old party rituals like rallies with old-guard union bosses and farm leaders, and events with bused-in crowds.

Meade stuck close to the line of current President Enrique Pena Nieto, telling a crowd at the party headquarters in Mexico City that continuity is the best bet.

“Not everything has to be demolished, not everything has to be changed, not everything has to be invented,” Meade said.