The Wall Street Journal, 7/2/12
Mexico’s presidential vote was a closely fought three-way contest between the country’s three big parties. But in the race to be Mexico City’s mayor, arguably the second-most-powerful post in the country, there was no contest. The winner won by a 44-percentage-point landslide.
Many credit Miguel Ángel Mancera’s victory to a series of mayors from his leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution that preceded him and spent more than a decade remaking the capital on fronts from crime fighting to urban renewal.
In a country besieged by drug wars, crime has fallen in Mexico City since 1997 and drug cartels generally don’t fight the military in the streets. The city’s air, once notoriously dirty, has become noticeably better in the past decade. Since the early 2000s, the safety net has gradually increased after the city government began stipends for single mothers and the elderly.
