Secretaría de Cultura Ciudad de México from México, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons / DOD photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jette Carr, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, Cropped by Resist the Mainstream

Claudia Sheinbaum, the overwhelming front-runner in the United Mexican States’ upcoming presidential election, recently gave remarks to the press in Acapulco, striking a notably different tone about Mexican-American trade and political relations from that of her party’s incumbent President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose tenure has been marked by a combative and anti-neoliberal stance towards Mexico’s northern neighbor.

In contrast to the nationalist and protectionist-leaning incumbent, Sheinbaum emphasized her support for economic integration with the United States.

“The trade agreement [USMCA] represents enormous potential for the Mexican economy, not just what it represents today, but also … in the future with nearshoring,” Sheinbaum told Bloomberg News in a filmed conversation.

“We’re now the principal trading partner, and that requires us to have a good relationship,” she added.

Sheinbaum also expressed her belief that she could maintain a friendly and cooperative relationship with former U.S. president and current presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, in the event that both should win their respective elections, adding that the same principle would apply to incumbent U.S. President Joe Biden should he be re-elected in November.

These remarks contrast notably from the positions taken by Obrador, more commonly referred to by his acronymic nickname “AMLO,” who, despite benefitting from a trend in global economics which has resulted in American manufacturing demand increasingly relocating to Mexico away from China, has taken a belligerent stance in opposition to the influence of the United States.

AMLO’s ideology is characterized chiefly populist and anti-neoliberal, combining resolutely socialistic economic policies with some socially conservative leanings and skepticism of the medical establishment’s stances on COVID-19. Consequently, AMLO has been compared to both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders—though AMLO has denied any resemblance to the former.

Sheinbaum, despite emerging as the standard bearer for a party whose abbreviated name literally means “brown,” does not herself possess any indigenous Mexican heritage and is instead descended from Eastern European Jews, who migrated from Lithuania and Bulgaria in the 1920s and 1940s, respectively.

Sheinbaum’s helmship of the notably populist political party has resulted in some awkward moments, such as when the Jewish politician was photographed in 2022 wearing a flashy traditional-style Mexican dress adorned with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, despite her own faith’s denial of the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Nonetheless, Sheinbaum’s poll numbers suggest that Mexican voters are generally unconcerned with these contrivances and aberrations from the positions of her popular predecessor, or at least willing to overlook them in favor of their support for MORENA. The most recent data from polling aggregator AC/COA shows Sheinbaum with a commanding lead of 59 percent as of last month against two major rivals.

Sheinbaum’s distant second-place rival is Xóchitl Gálvez, with 35 percent support as of March. Galvez is representing the eclectic Strength and Heart for Mexico coalition, an unlikely alliance of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI, which ruled Mexico for 71 years), the National Action Party (PAN, who were until recently the chief rivals of the PRI and who ended the 71 years of PRI rule in the 2000 Presidential Election), and Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD, which was co-founded by none other than MORENA incumbent AMLO as a left-wing alternative to the PRI). Strange bedfellows, indeed.

An even more distant third place is held by Jorge Álvarez Máynez of the Citizen’s Movement (MC), who at six percent support merits a single, cursory sentence of acknowledgement.