CARTELS SHAKE UP POLITICS IN MEXICO

Political parties and drug cartels have stakes in today's Mexico
elections, experts say.

"The attacks against politicians could be coincidental," said Jorge
Bravo, a Mexico politics expert at Rutgers University of New Jersey.
"However, a lot of things are up for grabs, and a lot of the violence
stems from the disequilibrium in the drug cartels. There is no other
industry in the world that generates such huge profits."

George Grayson, a government professor at William & Mary College in
Williamsburg, Va., alleges that the drug cartels have infiltrated
Mexico's political process.

"Although the kingpins are delighted when they help elect a friend or
defeat a foe, their goal is to generate an atmosphere of uncertainty
and fear," Grayson said.

Violence marked the campaign leading to today's elections.

Rodolfo Torre Cantu, 46, a candidate for governor of Tamaulipas for
the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, was shot dead June 28
on his way to a campaign event in Valle Hermoso.

Assassins killed Jose Mario Guajardo, the National Action Party's, or
PAN, mayoral candidate for Valle Hermoso, on May 13.

Authorities said a Molotov cocktail-type bomb was thrown Saturday at
the Culiacan campaign headquarters of Jesus Vizcarra Calderon, the PRI
candidate for governor of Sinaloa. No one was injured. Also, the
offices of the Revolutionary Democratic Party, or PRD, and PAN, were
hit with Molotov cocktails.

Luis Donaldo Colosio, who ran for president for the PRI, had been the
latest high-level politician slain in Mexico. He was killed in 1994
during a campaign rally in Tijuana.

Diego Fernandez De Cevallos, 69, a prominent lawyer and former
presidential candidate for the PAN, was kidnapped May 15 in the state
of Queretaro. He is still missing.

Grayson said cartels used to focus on mayors in key cities, but now
they are more interested in governors, who can play bigger roles in
national politics.

Today, Mexican citizens will elect governors in 12 of 31
states.

Cesar Nava, the PAN's national director, said Zetas, a group that
broke away from the Gulf cartel, have threatened PAN candidates in the
states of Veracruz and Hidalgo.

Victor Espinoza, of the Colegio de la Frontera in Tijuana, said it was
too early in the investigations of recent attacks to determine the
perpetrators and their motives. Espinoza agreed with Bravo that
violence against Mexican politicians had intensified during the past
two years.

Bravo said the power of cartels in elections could be
formidable.

"The question isn't whether politicians have been corrupted. It's more
why aren't there more of them being corrupted," Bravo said. "Given the
resources the cartels have, it would be unusual for drug money not to
play a role in the campaigns."

Espinoza said, "If organized crime is behind the attacks, then the
message for the political class is, 'We rule and we don't accept
criticisms or drastic changes that will impede our
activities.'

"However, if the attacks were perpetrated by political rivals, then
this trend signals a political decomposition that is highly worrisome.
The attempts and violence only serve to hurt an already fragile
Mexican democracy."

Juarez residents head to the polls today to elect a new mayor and cast
ballots for a new Chihuahua state governor.

The heated campaigns between PRI and PAN candidates have been marked
by accusations of accepting help from or protecting drug
traffickers.

On Thursday, city police removed a banner that someone left outside a
government building in central Juarez, allegedly from the Carrillo
Fuentes cartel, threatening Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz and law
enforcement officials.

While the candidates campaigned, the Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman and
Carrillo Fuentes cartels continued to wage their bloody battle for
control of Chihuahua state, considered a strategic smuggling corridor.

This year's Chihuahua state gubernatorial candidates are Luis Adolfo
Orozco, for the PRD; Cesar Duarte, for the PRI and its multiparty
alliance; and Carlos Borruel, for the PAN.

The mayoral candidates are Hector Murguia, for the PRI; Cesar
Jauregui, for the PAN; Carlos Olivas, for the PRD; and America Aguilar
Gil, for the Partido de Trabajo (Labor Party).

Last weekend, the brother of Octavio Beanes Silva, a PRI mayoral
candidate in the Valle de Juarez village of Praxedis Guerrero,
Chihuahua, was kidnapped.

Before that, three city council members for Guada lupe, a neighboring
village in the Valle de Juarez and known drug-cartel stronghold across
the border from Tornillo, were murdered. The crimes are unsolved.