Mexico is poised to elect its first lady president right this moment, seemingly local weather scientist and former Mexico Metropolis mayor Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. 

However because the protégée of present President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, she hasn’t considerably differentiated herself from the populist chief, particularly within the areas the place AMLO, as the present president is nicknamed, has did not ship — together with Mexico’s astronomical murder price, crime resulting from narco-trafficking, and authorities corruption. Now the query is to what extent Sheinbaum will have the ability to make progress on these issues whereas working underneath the shadow of her mentor.

Sheinbaum’s early profession was as an environmental engineer and local weather scientist; she was a part of a Nobel Prize-winning workforce behind a report for the Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change in 2007. She began her political profession as AMLO’s environmental minister throughout his time as Mexico Metropolis’s mayor within the early 2000s and later served because the capital’s mayor herself. However throughout AMLO’s tenure, she’s been in her mentor’s shadow when it comes to coverage, particularly as the present administration’s investments in fossil gasoline contradict the pressing want to modify to renewable power — and drain the administration’s coffers.

Sheinbaum is outpolling her closest competitor, businesswoman and former Senator Xóchitl Gálvez, by round 20 factors main as much as Sunday’s election. Gálvez is backed by a three-party coalition that features El Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and El Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), which managed Mexico for seven a long time earlier than AMLO was elected in 2018.

If polls bear out, as soon as Sheinbaum is in workplace she’ll have a lot to sort out. She’s promised at occasions to pursue a extra market-friendly strategy than AMLO, and at others to take his coverage to the “second flooring.” The query shall be: Whereas driving on AMLO’s recognition and certain juggling his ongoing affect, how will she lead Mexico if and when she, not her mentor, is the president?

Sheinbaum isn’t the primary hand-picked successor in Mexican politics; it’s a standard characteristic on the nationwide degree for presidents, who serve one time period, to have a protégé chosen, Pleasure Kathryn Langston, a political science professor on the School of Mexico’s Middle for Worldwide Research, informed Vox. 

Mexico’s economic system is performing effectively by some metrics, and AMLO has expanded the welfare state, which has helped Sheinbaum and the Morena social gathering she represents — whereas additionally stymieing her skill or want to return out of AMLO’s shadow, not less than whereas on the marketing campaign path. 

AMLO’s insurance policies have been considerably targeted on the economic system, as Juan David Rojas wrote within the journal American Affairs in 2022. Investing in home oil manufacturing, curbing authorities spending, and cracking down on petrochemical theft have helped shore up international funding within the type of nationwide bonds. The peso is at a 20-year peak, the best-performing main forex to date this 12 months in response to Bloomberg, resulting from excessive rates of interest, extraordinarily excessive remittances from the US, and the likelihood that firms may construct factories in Mexico to be nearer to their US client base.

None of that’s prone to change an excessive amount of underneath Sheinbaum. “It’s just about a foregone conclusion that Sheinbaum shall be a continuation of the established order,” Christian Lawrence, a strategist at Rabobank, informed Bloomberg in March.

Whereas that’s essential on the world stage, AMLO’s social welfare insurance policies have extra direct influence on Mexicans’ on a regular basis lives. 

Social welfare spending tripled throughout AMLO’s first 5 years in workplace, reaching $24 billion final 12 months. That has boosted his recognition among the many working class, significantly when mixed together with his enmity towards Mexico’s political and company lessons. Sheinbaum polls particularly excessive amongst voters who obtain or have relations who obtain welfare advantages, beating Gálvez by some 40 factors, an April ballot within the newspaper El Financiero discovered. 

The influence of social welfare spending has been important, not less than politically talking. Although not as far-reaching as previous welfare applications, the pension for Mexico’s aged inhabitants — Indigenous folks over 65 and non-Indigenous folks over 68 — has been extraordinarily common, even successful over folks in states like Oaxaca, lengthy the area of the PRI. AMLO has additionally elevated the minimal wage and proposed a common pension program, which might be the primary on the planet to pay folks equal to their full salaries after they retire. 

AMLO has additionally elevated infrastructure spending, together with a brand new airport in Oaxaca, a state-run airline, a vacationer prepare referred to as the Tren Maya, and lots of different civilian and navy infrastructure tasks. In some methods, it’s been a boon, offering higher jobs for folks in Mexico’s poorer southern states particularly. However there are additionally complaints that the tasks are rushed and shoddy, incomplete, over price range, environmentally harmful, and overused navy and safety assets, which forestall them from preventing violent crime. His coverage of pouring cash into PEMEX, Mexico’s state-run petroleum company, will even seemingly be a serious debt burden for Sheinbaum to cope with.

Nonetheless, many points of the spending push have been politically common — a lot in order that if Mexico’s structure would let him run once more, AMLO would seemingly win. Sheinbaum would be the subsequent neatest thing, many citizens appear to have determined. However with out AMLO’s signature populist charisma, she should deal with delivering actual outcomes, particularly within the locations the place AMLO has failed, like crime and corruption. 

“Whether or not [Sheinbaum] will change is clearly unimaginable to say,” Langston mentioned. “You possibly can solely base your predictions or my predictions on what she has acknowledged publicly, which is that she won’t seriously change the most important money-guzzling budget-busting insurance policies of the final six years.” However finally, that may hamper the state’s skill to proceed the social welfare spending that’s AMLO’s calling card.

Sheinbaum might must introduce some unpopular insurance policies, similar to growing taxes, with a view to maintain these common applications afloat.

Sheinbaum — or whoever wins right this moment — will face main challenges as soon as she will get into workplace, together with environmental points exacerbated by local weather change, excessive murder charges, and finally, the financial burden of AMLO’s welfare spending.

And a few of these challenges shall be laborious to face from a coverage perspective, due to her predecessor. “[AMLO] decided the political agenda for the following two years, even earlier than he left workplace,” Langston mentioned. “He did that in roughly between January and March, by putting all of those extremely complicated insurance policies and reforms, lots of which may harm democracy, placing them in underneath a brand new legislative invoice.” That reality, mixed with the chance that Morena won’t obtain a majority within the congress following right this moment’s election, may additionally make it tough for Sheinbaum to enact her personal coverage priorities.

Mexico is the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gasses in Latin America and the Caribbean, and is weak to excessive climate occasions and coastal flooding, which impacts the coastal vacationer business. The general vacationer business accounted for 8 p.c of Mexico’s GDP earlier than the Covid-19 pandemic, and practically 6 p.c of the workforce was engaged within the tourism business, in response to the Group for Financial Cooperation and Improvement. 

One major query outdoors observers have about Sheinbaum is whether or not she’ll comply with her scientific coaching in relation to local weather change insurance policies. She’s been pretty mum on the subject all through the marketing campaign, and her document on local weather change coverage as mayor of Mexico Metropolis is considerably blended. Throughout her tenure, the capital metropolis’s buses went electrical, and she or he began work on the world’s largest city photo voltaic panel manufacturing unit. However she additionally fast-tracked development of a freeway bridge by way of Mexico Metropolis’s protected wetlands earlier than an environmental influence report was accomplished. 

As president, Sheinbaum has pledged to spend money on different inexperienced power initiatives and electrify bus providers throughout the nation. And supporters say that science will lead her local weather change initiatives — not her mentor’s development tasks or petrochemical growth.  

The cartel disaster has additionally continued underneath AMLO, and in some methods has gotten extra entrenched, as Related Press reporter Megan Janetsky informed Vox’s Sean Rameswaram. 

“Underneath AMLO, cartels and different felony teams have expanded in energy,” Janetsky mentioned. “Extortion has expanded. These teams have grown extra complicated to the purpose the place oftentimes they’re in contrast extra to large unlawful firms which might be continually forward of authorities on this cat-and-mouse recreation, as a result of they’re warring with one another.”

Whereas AMLO did put an finish to Mexico’s drug battle, which began underneath former President Felipe Calderón and arguably exacerbated the violence related to with the cartels, his “hugs, not bullets” coverage (meant to focus on systemic points fueling the violence) has not resulted in a big drop in homicides; Mexico nonetheless sees about 30,000 crime-related deaths every year. A mean of 1 journalist is killed every week, and within the embattled southern state of Chiapas, 14 political candidates have been killed by the cartels throughout this election season.

Sheinbaum has mentioned that she’s going to coordinate intently with the US to cut back narco-trafficking, human trafficking, arms flows, and cash laundering. However there’s a scarcity of readability round precisely how she plans to stanch the immense violence, which incorporates pressured disappearances and extortion. Like AMLO, she has pledged to proceed to handle the systemic points like poverty and lack of schooling and job alternatives that make felony enterprises interesting. “We’re going to rescue younger folks from the clutches of felony gangs, and we’re going to offer them help,” she mentioned in a Could 19 debate. She has additionally promised to bolster the Nationwide Guard, giving it extra officers and surveillance capabilities. However that might additionally enhance the militarization of policing and preventing crime, a big human rights concern.

For Sheinbaum, really governing the nation will seemingly be way more tough than successful the election, as AMLO leaves behind a posh governing legacy.  And with out AMLO’s private enchantment, she’s going to seemingly should ship — and sacrifice — in methods he couldn’t or wouldn’t.