Jul 4, 6:40 PM EDT

Mexicans vote elections besieged by drug violence

By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ AND ALEXANDRA OLSON
Associated Press Writers

CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico (AP) -- More than a dozen Mexican states held elections Sunday after campaigning besieged by assassinations and scandals that displayed drug cartels' power. The party that ruled Mexico for 71 years hoped to capitalize on frustrations over the bloodshed and gain momentum in its bid to regain the presidency in two years.

The elections for governors, mayors and other posts are the biggest political challenge yet for the government of President Felipe Calderon, who has deployed troops and federal police trying to wrest back territory from drug traffickers.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party, which held on to power for seven decades through a system of largess and corruption that many considered a quasi-dictatorship, has recovered popularity amid frustration with Mexico's surging drug gang violence.

The party, known as the PRI, held up the assassination of its gubernatorial candidate in the northern state of Tamaulipas as evidence Calderon has failed to bring security despite the presence of tens of thousands of troops in drug trafficking hot spots.

Leaders of Calderon's conservative National Action Party, in turn, insinuated the PRI protects drug traffickers in Tamaulipas, the birthplace of the Gulf cartel, and in the northern state of Sinaloa, the cradle of the cartel by the same name.

A new scandal enveloped outgoing Tamaulipas Gov. Eugenio Hernandez: On Sunday, federal prosecutors said they were questioning one of his bodyguards, Ismael Ortega Galicia, after the newspaper Reforma reported that the U.S. Treasury Department has listed him as a key member of the Gulf or Zeta drug gangs. The former allies split this year and are fighting for turf in Tamaulipas.

Tamaulipas Public Safety director Jose Soberon said Mexican federal prosecutors had previously investigated Ortega and found no evidence against him. Officials at the federal Attorney General's Office said they had no immediate information on that claim.

Soberon also said Ortega had traveled to the U.S. several times with the governor and had never been detained, despite the U.S. Treasury Department listing.

Rodolfo Torre, the governor's hand-picked successor, was killed Monday along with four companions when gunmen ambushed his campaign caravan in Ciudad Victoria, the state capital. The day before, he had pledged to make security a priority, and supporters say that may have been what got him killed.

The PRI chose his brother, Egidio Torres, to run in his place. The new candidate arrived to vote at an elementary school in Ciuadad Victoria wearing a bulletproof vest and escorted by heavily armed federal police in two trucks.

Fear discouraged many people from voting in a state where extorsion and abductions are rampant and armed men openly drive on highways with the acronym of the Gulf cartel stamped on their SUVs.

Dozens of poll workers quit in fear over the past week. One man, an orange farmer, said his brother-in-law was kidnapped early Sunday before he was to preside over a voting station in a village outside Ciudad Victoria.

"We still don't know if he was kidnapped because of the elections or because they will ask for money," said the farmer, who asked not be quoted by name out of fear for his own safety. "Here the goverment is part of the problem."

Voting lines also were short in Ciudad Juarez, a city across the border from El Paso, Texas, that has become one of the deadliest places in the world.

"Maybe people are scared and that's why they haven't come out to vote," said Arturo Gonzalez, presiding over one nearly empty voting center in the city.

One elderly woman said she decided to vote at the last minute. "We saw on the television that everything was calm so we came quickly but we're leaving now," she said, refusing to give her name as she hurried home.

Former Ciudad Juarez Mayor Hector Murguia of the PRI was expected to win a new term despite facing allegations of drug ties ever since the director of police operations in his first administration was sentenced in 2008 to prison in Texas for facilitating marijuana smuggling. Murguia denies any links to organized crime.

Four bodies were hung early Sunday from bridges in Chihuahua city, the capital of the state that includes Ciudad Juarez. Police took them down before daybreak. Later, police found the bullet-ridden bodies of six people on a highway outside the city.

In the resort city of Cancun, voters passed by banners reminding them of a scandal that shook the race for governor of Quintana Roo state: Gregorio Sanchez, candidate for the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party, was arrested last month for allegedly protecting two drug cartels as mayor of Cancun, allegations he has dimissed as politically motivated.

The banners read: "Greg's Cartel. Enough of criminals in government." They included photographs of Sanchez and candidates for other positions in the state.

"This is why people aren't coming out to vote," said Moises Cruz, 35, a restaurant employee who cast his ballot in an elementary school where about two dozen people were voting. "I have a neighbor who said he wasn't voting because there was no sense in it."

Calderon's National Action Party has allied with leftist parties to try to oust the PRI from some of its strongholds.

Among those is the small central state of Hidalgo, where tensions rose after state police raided the campaign offices of National Action gubernatorial candidate Xochitl Galvez.

Police detained 12 people, including two with weapons, Hidalgo Attorney General Jose Rodriguez told Milenio television. He said police had received an anonymous tip that armed men were nearby.

Galvez denounced the raid as political intimidation.

The left-right alliance is also hoping to oust the PRI from its longtime bastion in Sinaloa.

The PRI gubernatorial candidate, Jesus Vizcarra, has long faced allegations of ties to the cartel led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's most-wanted drug lord.

Reforma recently published a photograph of Vizcarra attending a party many years ago with El Chapo's second-in-command, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada. Vizcarra, the mayor of state capital Culiacan and a distant relative of slain drug trafficker Ines Calderon, has dodged questions about whether Zambada is the godfather of one of his children.

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Associated Press writer By Olga R. Rodriguez reported this story from Ciudad Victoria and Alexandra Olson from Mexico City. AP writers Olivia Torres in Ciudad Juarez, Emilio Lopez in Hidalgo and Gabriel Alcocer in Cancun contributed to this report.

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