Jorge Hank Rohn, the highly eccentric former mayor of Tijuana with 19 offspring and a zoo of thousands of rare animals, appears to have lost his bid for governor of Baja California on Sunday as the PRI candidate. Hank, persisently linked to organized crime and corruption, was unable to dethrone his rival party the conservative PAN, which has enjoyed stronghold status in Baja for decades. The PAN candidate José Guadalupe Osuna Millán won, but who cares? The real news is Hank's loss.
Richard Marosi of the LA Times had this good profile of Hank running up to Sunday, describing the formation of his larger-than-life populist personality and the peculiarities of his lifestyle:
Almost every day, people line up outside his office at the racetrack, which doubles as a social services center of sorts. Staffers with medical, financial and legal expertise evaluate requests for help gathered on the campaign trail and from people who show up at the track. The philanthropist image takes flight on the campaign trail. In a comic book distributed to children at events, Hank is depicted as a caped superhero, Hombre H., a fearless crime fighter and protector of the poor.
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Some aren't convinced. Hank's proposed solutions to Baja California's crime and growth problems are simplistic, they say, and he talks down to people, as though they were children. Many women say they would never support a man once quoted as saying that women were his favorite animals. (Aren't we all animals? Hank said in explanation.)
In its preview of the race, the Union-Tribune noted that a "Hank victory in Baja California would give the PRI control over all six of Mexico's northern border states." Apparently didn't happen, but don't expect the PRI, traditional masters of the electoral boondoggle, to give up honorably. Frontera notes Monday that national PRI leader Beatriz Paredes (who lost her bid for mayor of Mexico D.F. last year) said her party wants "figures in hand" before conceding defeat.
Meanwhile, the law-and-order New York Times rushed to declare the voting peaceful and without problems, while noting some polling places opened late or just didn't open. La Opinion's reports that voters were approached with bribes to vote for Hank's PRI. Either way, after such an intense campaign, no one really wins, as a local man tied to the proudly leftist PRD party told the U-T: "This campaign has nothing to do with the democracy we are looking for in this country."
* Links: LAT round-up, LAT preview, Union-Tribune preview, Frontera on Osuna Millán, Beatriz statement, NYT round-up, La Opinion story. Previous posts in Intersections on the Baja election here and here. Photo by Annie Wells, LAT.
** ADD: Josh Kun's meditation on the arrival of Starbucks in Tijuana (an assault on the land of D'Volada) and the Union-Tribune's nice multimedia package on Tijuana's wonderful Mercado Hidalgo.
*** And in case you were wondering, my little sister's binational San Diego/TJ wedding was really marvelous. The beautiful bride arrived at the non denominational ceremony at Old Town's Temple Beth Israel Historic Site in style, riding in the back of my dad's gleaming 1940 Buick, with proud pa Sergio at the wheel. The families extravagantly decked out Salon Alhambra in Tijuana with a martini bar, chocolate fountains, mariachis, a video slideshow, and a goddamn pyrotechnics display. Everyone was faded. It was awesome. Erika and Juan dazzled.