Claudia Sheinbaum’s listing of accolades is lengthy: She has a Ph.D. and a shared Nobel Peace Prize and was the primary lady elected to steer Mexico Metropolis, her nation’s capital and one of many largest cities within the Western Hemisphere.
Now she has one other likelihood to make historical past. Ms. Sheinbaum, 61, is the clear front-runner within the Mexican election on Sunday, placing her in place to grow to be the nation’s first feminine president.
However she has a picture downside, and she or he is aware of it.
Many Mexicans are questioning: Can she be her personal chief? Or is she a pawn of the present president?
“There’s this concept, as a result of a whole lot of columnists say it, that I don’t have a character,” Ms. Sheinbaum complained to reporters earlier this yr. “That President Andrés Manuel López Obrador tells me what to do, that after I get to the presidency, he’s going to be calling me on the cellphone on daily basis.”
With the Mexican election simply days away, Ms. Sheinbaum is going through a elementary dilemma.
She insists she is going to govern independently from her mentor, Mr. López Obrador, and has some completely different priorities. However veering too removed from his agenda might be very dangerous.
She and Mr. López Obrador are “completely different individuals,” she mentioned in an interview. He’s an oilman who invested in environmentally questionable initiatives; she’s a local weather scientist. But Ms. Sheinbaum has risen to the highest partly by aligning herself utterly with him, and by backing strikes like his huge wager on the nationwide oil firm and constitutional modifications that critics name antidemocratic.
Will she dare to stray from these insurance policies if she wins workplace, inviting the reproach of Mr. López Obrador and the motion that acquired her there? Or will she dedicate herself to cementing his legacy, even when it means stifling her personal imaginative and prescient?
“Claudia can’t say what she’s going to do, as a result of proper now she has to indicate absolute loyalty to Andrés Manuel,” mentioned Ana Laura Magaloni, a authorized professional who suggested Ms. Sheinbaum throughout her first yr as mayor.
“What’s going to occur when Claudia is free from that yoke, when Andrés Manuel is not there?” Ms. Magaloni mentioned. “Nobody is aware of.”
The opposite high contender is a lady named Xóchitl Gálvez, a tech entrepreneur who’s representing a number of opposition events. However with Ms. Sheinbaum main the polls by 20 share factors, a lot of the nationwide debate has centered on who she would actually be as president.
Ms. Sheinbaum says it’s sexist to recommend that the doable first feminine chief of Mexico is absolutely solely the puppet of a person.
“There’s a hint of misogyny, of machismo there,” she advised one interviewer. “They are saying, ‘The one motive she’s forward within the polls is as a result of she’s the identical because the president, or she’s the president’s favourite.’”
Mr. López Obrador will probably be remembered for doubling the minimal wage and lifting tens of millions out of poverty, but in addition for empowering the navy, prioritizing fossil fuels and pushing measures that critics say might weaken Mexico’s democratic establishments.
His successor stands to inherit an extended listing of troubles. The state-owned oil firm is buckling below debt, migration by way of the nation has reached historic highs, violence is raging and former President Donald J. Trump is already threatening tariffs if he wins the American election.
Ms. Sheinbaum advised The New York Instances that she was ready to work with whichever candidate wins the subsequent U.S. election. Publicly, she has echoed Mr. López Obrador’s emphasis on tackling Mexico’s cartel violence and migration by addressing their root causes. In a touch of potential change, she mentioned in a current debate that she would search to reform the country’s migration authority, an company usually accused of corruption.
“We should be more practical in lowering irregular crossings,” Juan Ramón de la Fuente, a member of her marketing campaign group who’s seen as her likeliest decide for international minister, mentioned in an interview.
Some in Washington have privately questioned whether or not Mexico’s cooperation on migration might lag after the nation’s elections, however Mr. de la Fuente batted away these issues. “We’ll proceed with the identical, I might say, rigor making an attempt to include these flows of migrants,” he mentioned.
A former ballet dancer, Ms. Sheinbaum calls herself “obsessive” and “disciplined.” However self-discipline might not be sufficient, analysts say.
Mr. López Obrador is a generational political expertise who constructed his social gathering right into a juggernaut by counting on the power of his character. When his coalition grew to become fractious, he used his huge political capital to corral inside rivals. When issues arose, he persuaded Mexicans he was fixing them even when his personal government’s statistics disagreed.
Now comes Ms. Sheinbaum, her demeanor extra professorial than fiery, making an attempt to take management of a political world outlined by Mr. López Obrador’s model of energy.
“She wants him,” mentioned Carlos Heredia, a Mexican political analyst. “She doesn’t have the charisma, she doesn’t have the recognition, she doesn’t have the political stamina of her personal, so she must borrow that from López Obrador.”
The Instances spoke with two dozen individuals who have labored with or know Ms. Sheinbaum and likewise visited marketing campaign occasions, reviewed her writings and her media appearances and interviewed her, as soon as in 2020 and once more this yr.
What grew to become clear is that Ms. Sheinbaum has lengthy appeared extra snug quietly getting issues accomplished than promoting herself or her achievements.
The granddaughter of Jewish immigrants who fled Europe, she not often discusses being Jewish or nearly something about her private life, colleagues say. When interviewers ask her concerning the Nobel Prize she shared with a panel of local weather researchers, she notes what number of others had been concerned within the work.
She is named a troublesome boss with a fast mood who can encourage in her workers worry and adoration on the similar time. Publicly, although, her have an effect on is so managed it verges on aloof.
Mr. López Obrador, in contrast, is completely snug revealing his inside emotional state to the world. Practically each weekday for the final 5 years, he has held a morning information convention by which he spends hours hashing out his anxieties, celebrating his wins and assailing his critics. When he’s not going for the jugular, he comes throughout as heat and charming.
“Andrés is extra charismatic,” Marcelo Ebrard, the previous international minister who’s now on Ms. Sheinbaum’s marketing campaign group, mentioned in an interview. A one-time rival of Ms. Sheinbaum’s inside the social gathering, Mr. Ebrard didn’t imply this negatively. Hers is “a distinct form of management” he mentioned, which can be “extra environment friendly” than personality-driven.
For some Mexicans, a thrills-free lady could also be an excellent antidote to an entertaining man who plunged the nation into partisan turmoil.
However her opponents simply see a possibility.
At a recent campaign event for college students, Jorge Álvarez Máynez, the third-place candidate, was requested to outline Ms. Sheinbaum.
“Very boring,” he mentioned, smirking. The room broke into applause.
‘The Mayor Stated To’
Born to 2 scientists who had been leftist activists within the capital, Ms. Sheinbaum was at all times “a severe woman,” mentioned Arturo Cano, a journalist who wrote a biography of the candidate. As a toddler, she made household visits to feed political prisoners, Mr. Cano mentioned.
Whereas on the Nationwide Autonomous College, she helped lead a motion protesting a plan to lift scholar charges and alter admissions. She married one of many leaders of the motion and had a toddler with him.
Within the early Nineties, they moved to California, the place she studied Mexico’s power consumption on the Lawrence Berkeley Nationwide Laboratory.
The candidate’s political profession started when Mr. López Obrador was elected mayor of Mexico Metropolis in 2000 and invited her to a gathering at a diner. “What I would like is to scale back air pollution,” she recalled Mr. López Obrador telling her. “Have you learnt how to try this?”
Ms. Sheinbaum, who by then had written greater than a dozen reviews on power use and carbon emissions, mentioned sure. She grew to become his setting minister. In conferences, she appeared keen to do nearly something to make her boss completely satisfied, based on a number of individuals who labored along with her.
“The phrase she used again and again was ‘The mayor mentioned to,’” mentioned Mr. Heredia, who labored along with her in metropolis authorities below Mr. López Obrador.
What that meant, based on Mr. Heredia: “We’re not a cupboard for giving concepts,” he mentioned. “We’re a bunch of individuals right here to execute what he decides.”
Mr. Heredia was confused when he realized that Ms. Sheinbaum, the local weather professional, was overseeing the capital’s huge new funding: constructing an elevated freeway throughout Mexico Metropolis. The undertaking would simply encourage individuals to drive extra, critics mentioned.
On the time, Ms. Sheinbaum mentioned that the brand new highway decreased air pollution by easing visitors, although consultants say it’s arduous to corroborate that declare. One 2018 study mentioned the impact on emissions was “not vital” as a result of though congestion was decrease, the variety of automobiles elevated.
In 2006, Mr. López Obrador ran for president and misplaced by lower than one share level. He disputed the outcomes and led his supporters in a monthslong occupation of the capital’s downtown.
There, he held his personal inauguration ceremony, the place he proclaimed himself “the reputable president” of Mexico. Ms. Sheinbaum helped adorn him with a presidential sash. When he then arrange a “reputable cupboard,” he named Ms. Sheinbaum as a minister.
“Many people didn’t wish to be part of them on this madness of a ‘reputable cupboard,’” mentioned Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, now within the opposition, who was then a part of the leftist social gathering Mr. López Obrador belonged to.
“However she was there with him,” Mr. Acosta Naranjo mentioned, “residing on this underworld, on this alternate, parallel universe full of people that thought they had been making a revolution.”
‘What Do You Need, Somebody Smooth?’
Within the years that adopted, Ms. Sheinbaum straddled academia and politics, however she at all times stayed near Mr. López Obrador. When he based his Morena social gathering in 2014, he requested her to run on the social gathering’s ticket to grow to be mayor of Tlalpan, a borough of Mexico Metropolis. Together with his backing, she gained.
In 2018, he was swept into the presidency in a landslide and she or he grew to become Mexico Metropolis’s mayor. She rapidly gained a fame as an exacting boss.
“One doesn’t go to her conferences to inform her, ‘I’m engaged on it,’” mentioned Soledad Aragón, a former member of Ms. Sheinbaum’s cupboard. When she walked right into a room, Ms. Aragón mentioned, everybody sat up straight.
The mayor might keep in mind particular numbers talked about in a gathering weeks after it occurred, Ms. Aragón mentioned, calling her “sensible” and “demanding,” particularly with herself, including: “It has gotten outcomes.”
5 officers who’ve labored with Ms. Sheinbaum, who weren’t approved to talk publicly, mentioned that she was fast to anger at instances and would yell at her subordinates in entrance of huge teams. By means of a spokesman, Ms. Sheinbaum declined to touch upon the accusation.
Mr. Cano, the biographer, mentioned that when he requested Ms. Sheinbaum concerning the “many, many tales” he had heard of her toughness as a boss, she advised him: “If there’s one factor I can’t stand, it’s lazy individuals.”
Her defenders say some individuals merely reacted badly to a lady in cost.
“I do know that in her authorities, generally individuals acquired offended or felt dangerous as a result of she yelled at them,” mentioned Marta Lamas, a longtime feminist activist who has been near Ms. Sheinbaum and her group. “But when a person yells, it wouldn’t be a difficulty as a result of culturally, it’s completely different.”
“Folks say it in a vital approach: ‘She’s powerful,’” Ms. Aragón mentioned. “What would you like, somebody tender accountable for the town?”
By the point Covid hit Mexico, Ms. Sheinbaum had eked out some house to manipulate her personal approach, empowering technocrats over social gathering loyalists and investing within the police to combat crime, as an alternative of counting on the navy like Mr. López Obrador.
Now, in interviews, she factors to the pandemic as proof that she and Mr. López Obrador are not always aligned.
Mr. López Obrador not often wore masks in public, urged two amulets would defend him from Covid and didn’t emphasize nationwide testing. Ms. Sheinbaum examined aggressively and pushed mask-wearing.
However when scientific ideas conflicted along with her loyalty, Ms. Sheinbaum selected loyalty.
As Christmas approached in 2020, with hospital beds working low, the federal authorities misled citizens about the severity of the virus within the capital, saying it hadn’t reached the vital degree of contagion that might have required a full lockdown. The capital stayed open for weeks.
Ms. Sheinbaum might have shut the town down earlier, however didn’t. The outcome was an infinite outbreak.
An unbiased fee this yr referred to as the episode “probably the most severe authorities failures” of the pandemic in Mexico. Ms. Sheinbaum has mentioned she disagrees with the fee’s findings.
No Confrontation, No Submission
Ms. Sheinbaum’s conduct in the course of the marketing campaign has been a form of Rorschach check for the Mexicans obsessing over what path she would take if elected president. Those that suppose she would break from Mr. López Obrador see indicators of autonomy in all places. Those that disagree see solely obedience.
Subscribers to the primary narrative level to the candidate’s appointment of well-respected consultants to her marketing campaign group, her vow to advertise renewable power and her openness to re-evaluating the navy’s growth into public enterprises.
However she has additionally gotten behind among the president’s most contentious concepts.
In February, Mr. López Obrador put forth a set of profound modifications to the structure, together with eliminating unbiased regulators and requiring Supreme Courtroom justices to be elected by in style vote. The transfer provoked alarm amongst critics, who mentioned the president was making an attempt to obliterate checks and balances.
Nonetheless, a day later, Ms. Sheinbaum fell in line, holding a information convention the place she introduced she would undertake all his proposals as her personal.
To the naysayers, this was an illustration of their worst fears: Ms. Sheinbaum following directions from Mr. López Obrador to take steps that might hurt democracy.
However Mr. de la Fuente, who helps to design Ms. Sheinbaum’s plans, appeared to downplay the significance of the proposed modifications to the judiciary.
“I wouldn’t say it’s essentially the highest precedence,” he mentioned, including that Morena would wish to win a supermajority in Congress to push the measures by way of, one thing social gathering officers see as unlikely.
Between Ms. Sheinbaum and Mr. López Obrador, he added, “There will probably be no confrontation, however there will probably be no submission.”
For years, the candidate has tried to elucidate how she may be so in keeping with the president whereas additionally being herself. The reply, she says, is easy: She genuinely believes in him.
In 2022, a radio host requested her a pointed query from a feminine listener: “Why don’t you select to be a lady who governs along with her personal concepts? Why don’t you get out of AMLO’s circus?” she requested, utilizing Mr. López Obrador’s nickname. “Why have the identical rhetoric with the identical phrases?”
Ms. Sheinbaum didn’t hesitate.
“If you happen to suppose the identical as one other individual, it’s not that you simply’re copying them; you simply agree with the concepts,” she mentioned. “You’ll be able to’t deny what you consider.”
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting from Mexico Metropolis.
