MEXICO CITY — The presidential candidate of Mexico’s ruling party slipped up during a campaign speech on Friday, saying President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was motivated by “personal ambition,” but then acknowledged that the phrase “could be misinterpreted.” In Mexico it is used to describe a desire for personal economic benefit.
Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum has a comfortable lead in polls ahead of the June 2 election and has tried to tie her candidacy to López Obrador, who founded her Morena party. She is by far the more popular of the two politicians and Sheinbaum has vowed to follow her policies.
That is why it was even more surprising when he said on Friday that “we are not going to become president like Andrés Manuel López Obrador did, out of personal ambition.”
He later corrected himself and published a statement on his social media accounts that said: “At the end of my speech in Baja California Sur, a colleague told me that there was a phrase that could be misinterpreted… It is obvious that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador “He has transformed our country without personal ambitions.”
López Obrador, although autocratic in many ways, prides himself on his austere lifestyle and often disparagingly describes his rivals as “vulgar people with ambitions.”
Sheinbaum’s closest rival, opposition coalition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez, interpreted the former Mexico City mayor’s comments as a Freudian slip.
“The candidate of lies was finally betrayed by her subconscious, and finally admitted that she only acts out of personal ambition,” Gálvez wrote.
Gálvez has been wrong on occasion, including in April when he suggested that anyone who didn’t own a home by age 60 was bad at managing money. Galvez later said the comment was directed solely at Sheinbaum, who prides himself on living in a rental apartment and had criticized the opposition candidate for owning a home.
Jorge Álvarez Máynez, who is a distant third in the race, also apologized for posting a video in which he appeared to have been drinking and criticizing electoral authorities.
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