Mexico's conservatives bet on woman presidential hopeful

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Yahoo News:

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's ruling conservatives took a bold step by becoming the first major party to nominate a woman presidential candidate, but Josefina Vazquez Mota is struggling to close a big gap with the front-runner, hamstrung by internal party divisions.

Three weeks into a compressed campaign season before the July 1 vote, Vazquez Mota trails Enrique Pena Nieto from the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, by double digits in most opinion polls.

Vazquez Mota's National Action Party, or PAN, is placing its hopes in the petite 51-year-old politician, who served as President Felipe Calderon's education minister before becoming the party's leader in the lower house of congress.

She won popular support from grassroots voters to beat out the president's perceived favorite - former finance minister Ernesto Cordero - in a February primary vote, and is trying to overcome infighting to unify the party behind her.

But her campaign got off to a shaky start, and she is far behind the youthful former governor Pena Nieto, who hopes to seize back power for the PRI, which ruled Mexico for seven decades before being ousted by the PAN in 2000.

She overhauled her team just days into official campaigning, producing slick television spots, including one attack ad going after Pena Nieto's record as governor. In one ad she declares: "I will be a president in a skirt, but I will wear the pants."

But the gamble has yet to pay off. One poll published on April 19 even had her slipping back into third place, behind the 2006 runner-up, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

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Mexican presidential race heats up.

[Valin]

Conservative woman? I thought we were at war wit women! Oh that this just all sooo confusing.