Mexico Trucker Online

Mexicans voted for a new president on Sunday, torn between a Harvard-educated conservative and a feisty champion of the poor who could lead Mexico into Latin America’s resurgent left-wing camp.In a country crucial to U.S. interests in border security, trade and immigration, pre-election polls showed an extremely close race between leftist anti-poverty crusader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, and conservative Felipe Calderon from the ruling party.

Lopez Obrador, 52, headed opinion polls by about only 2 points after almost six months of bruising campaigning that split a country still finding its feet with full democracy after seven decades of one-party rule ended in 2000.

The leftist, who flatly rejects comparisons to U.S. foe Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, promises to slash bureaucracy to pay for welfare programs and infrastructure programs he says will help lift millions out of poverty.

“Lopez Obrador is the only one who can bring a new Mexican revolution where the poor are the ones who win,” said Amalia Rodriguez, a 19-year-old student in Mexico City.

Voting was peaceful but hundreds of people were unable to vote at a major polling station near Mexico City’s giant central square. When told there were no ballots left, they joined impromptu demonstrations in torrential rain and shouted “Obrador! Obrador!” as police looked on.

In the border city of Nuevo Laredo, thousands of Mexicans living in Texas streamed over the Rio Grande to vote. Many said they wanted a crackdown on drug gang violence that has killed about 1,000 people throughout Mexico this year.

Calderon, a 43-year-old former energy minister, says Lopez Obrador would overspend on social programs and huge projects like a bullet train from the capital to the U.S. border.

I’m afraid of the unknown with Lopez Obrador,” housewife Enriqueta Navarro, 66, said in the capital’s middle-class Satelite district. “I think he is going to be like a Chavez or a (Cuban President Fidel) Castro,” she said.

Another candidate, Roberto Madrazo, lagged in third place in polls but his once long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, has an electoral machinery famed for getting its supporters out to vote and may do better than polls suggest.

REBEL PROTEST

Subcomandante Marcos, leader of Zapatista rebels who took up arms in southern Mexico in 1994, marched in the capital with a few thousand supporters to protest against all the parties. Some danced in the street, others waved Communist flags.

Turnout was expected to be reasonably high at about two-thirds of Mexico’s 71 million voters. Voting ends at 8 p.m. and official results were expected three hours later.

Lopez Obrador supporters criticize President Vicente Fox for failing to meet promises to create jobs and tackle poverty even though Mexico has one of the region’s most stable economies. Fox cannot run for reelection under Mexican law.

In a country where at least half the population lives on less than $5 a day, Lopez Obrador has won support by promising to give pensions to those over 70 and cut energy prices.

“He is the only one who wants to help old people, women, single mothers,” said Marcela Olvera, who hobbled to vote with her broken leg in plaster. “We trust him. He doesn’t live like a rich man, he lives in a normal apartment,” she said.

Financial markets are hoping for a Calderon victory but worry that Lopez Obrador, a former Indian welfare officer with a history of organizing protests, might not accept that.

Lopez Obrador is expected to launch a legal challenge and maybe even street protests if he loses by a narrow margin and suspects fraud. There is no runoff in Mexico, so whoever gains the most votes wins the election.

Calderon is more in line with U.S. views on politics and business. He would seek foreign investment in energy. Lopez Obrador wants to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement to block tariff-free imports of U.S. corn and beans.

He says his anti-poverty drive would cut illegal migration to the United States by giving Mexicans a better life at home.

Voters will also choose a new Congress, where the next president is unlikely to have a majority.