Mexico's ruling party headed toward control of newly elected Supreme Court, vote tallies show

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s ruling Morena party appeared to be heading toward control over the Supreme Court, preliminary vote tallies of the country’s first judicial election indicated.

While votes were still being counted for the majority of the 2,600 federal, state and local judge positions up for grabs in Sunday’s judicial elections, results rolled in for the nine Supreme Court positions.

The majority of the newly elected justices share strong ties and ideological alignments with the ruling party, shifting a once fairly balanced high court into the hands of the very party that overhauled the judicial system to elect judges for the first time.

Experts warned the shift would undercut checks and balances in the Latin American nation: The governing party would now be close to controlling all three branches of government, and President Claudia Sheinbaum and her party also would have a easier path to push through their agenda.

“We’re watching as power is falling almost entirely into the hands of one party,” said Georgina De la Fuente, election specialist with the Mexican consulting firm Strategia Electoral. “There isn’t any balance of power.”

A Morena-leaning court and an Indigenous justice

Some of those headed toward election were members or former members of the party. A number of them, who were Supreme Court justices prior to the election, were appointed by former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum’s mentor who pushed through the judicial overhaul last year.

Others were advisers to the president or the party or campaigned with politically aligned visions for the judiciary.

Not all of the prospective winners were explicitly aligned with Morena. One standout was Hugo Aguilar Ortiz, an Indigenous lawyer from the southern state of Oaxaca. He has no clear party affiliation, though Sheinbaum said repeatedly she hoped to have an Indigenous judge on the court.

A political controversy

That Morena would emerge from the election with control of the judiciary was what critics had feared.

The vote came after months of fierce debate, prompted when López Obrador and the party jammed through the reforms for judges to be elected instead of being appointed based on merits. The overhaul will notably limit the Supreme Court as a counterweight to the president.

Critics say the judicial reform was an attempt to take advantage of high popularity levels to stack courts in favor of the party. Sheinbaum and her mentor have insisted that electing judges will root out corruption in a system most Mexicans agree is broken.

“Whoever says that there is authoritarianism in Mexico is lying,” Sheinbaum said during the vote. “Mexico is a country that is only becoming more free, just and democratic because that is the will of the people.”

The elections were marred by low participation — about 13% — and confusion by voters who struggled to understand the new voting system, something opponents quickly latched onto as a failure.

De la Fuente said Morena is likely to use its new lack of counterweight in the high court to push through rounds of reforms, including electoral changes.

Late Monday, more than 85% of the ballots had been tallied and counting was to continue overnight.

The leading Supreme Court candidates

— Hugo Aguilar Ortiz was the big surprise from the election. The Indigenous lawyer led all vote-getters, including several sitting Supreme Court justices. He’s known as a legal activist fighting for the rights of Indigenous Mexicans and has criticized corruption in the judiciary.

— Lenia Batres was already a Supreme Court justice and was appointed by López Obrador. Previously a congresswoman, she’s a member of Morena and clearly an ally of Mexico’s president.

— Yasmín Esquivel is a Supreme Court justice who was appointed by López Obrador. She focused her campaign on modernizing the justice system and has pushed for gender equality. She was at the center of a 2022 controversy when she was accused of plagiarizing her thesis. She is considered an ally of the Morena party.

— Loretta Ortiz is a justice on the Supreme Court who was appointed by López Obrador. She also served in Congress and resigned from Morena in 2018 in a show of independence as a judge. Despite that, she’s considered an ally of the party.

— María Estela Ríos González is a lawyer who acted as legal adviser to López Obrador, first when he was mayor of Mexico City and later when he became president. She has a long history as a public servant and work in labor law and on a number of Indigenous issues.

— Giovanni Figueroa Mejía is a lawyer from the Pacific coast state of Nayarit with a doctorate in constitutional law. He currently works as an academic at the Iberoamericana University in Mexico City. He’s worked in human rights. While he holds no clear party affiliation, he supported the judicial overhaul pushed forward by Morena, saying in an interview with his university that the overhaul “was urgent and necessary in order to rebuild” the judiciary. He said some of his work in constitutional law was cited in justifying the reform.

— Irving Espinosa Betanzo is a magistrate on Mexico City’s Supreme Court and has previously worked as a congressional adviser to Morena. He campaigned for the country’s highest court on a platform of eliminating nepotism and corruption and pushing for human rights.

— Arístides Rodrigo Guerrero García is a law professor pushing for social welfare with no experience as a judge, but who has worked as a public servant and has experience in both constitutional and parliamentary law. He gained traction in campaigns for a social media video of him claiming he’s “more prepared than a pork rind.”

— Sara Irene Herrerías Guerra is a prosecutor specializing in human rights for Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office. She’s worked on issues like gender equality, sexually transmitted infections and human trafficking. In 2023, she worked on the investigation of a fire in an immigration facility in the border city of Ciudad Juárez that killed 40 migrants.