DRUG-CARTEL LINKS HAUNT AN ELECTION SOUTH OF BORDER

COLIMA, Mexico -- The candidacy of Mario Anguiano, running for
governor in a state election here Sunday, says a lot about Mexican
politics amid the rise of the drug cartels.

A brother of the candidate is serving a 10-year prison sentence in
Mexico for peddling methamphetamine. Another Anguiano is serving 27
years in a Texas prison for running a huge meth ring. A few weeks
ago, a hand-painted banner hung on a highway overpass cited the
Zetas, the bloodthirsty executioners for the Gulf Cartel drug gang,
praising the candidate: "The Zetas support you, and we are with you
to the death."

Mr. Anguiano says his meth-dealing brother was just an addict who
sold small amounts to support his habit. He says the man jailed in
Texas, reported by local media to be his cousin, may or may not be a
relative. "If he is my cousin, I've never met him," he says. Denying
any involvement with traffickers, he says the supposed Zetas
endorsement was just a dirty trick by his election rivals.

If so, it backfired. In the weeks after the banner made local
headlines, new polls showed Mr. Anguiano pulling ahead in the race.
He is expected to be elected governor on Sunday.

The reaction suggests how blase some voters have become about
allegations of ties between their politicians and the drug
underworld, as Mexico prepares to elect a new lower house of
Congress, some state governors and many mayors. This, even as
political experts and law-enforcement people worry that violent drug
gangs are increasingly bankrolling a wide range of politicians'
campaigns across Mexico, in return for turning a blind eye to their activities.

Cartel Turf Wars

The election comes amid President Felipe Calderon's all-out war on
drug gangs, which wield armies of private gunmen and account for the
bulk of illegal drugs sold in the U.S. The conservative president has
deployed 45,000 troops to fight the gangs. In bloody confrontations
between his forces and the cartels, and especially in turf battles
among the cartels, an estimated 12,000 lives have been lost since Mr.
Calderon took office in late 2006. June was the deadliest month yet:
769 drug-related killings, according to a count by Mexican newspapers.

Until recent years, Mexican drug traffickers focused the bulk of
their bribery efforts on law enforcement rather than politicians.
Their increasing involvement in local politics -- in town halls and
state capitals -- is a response, experts say, to the national-level
crackdown, to changes in the nature of the drug trade itself and to
the evolution of Mexico's young democracy.
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Starting in 2000, a system of fiercely contested multiparty elections
began to replace 71 years of one-party rule, the Institutional
Revolutionary Party, or PRI. "In this newly competitive, moderately
democratic system, it takes serious money to run a political
campaign," says James McDonald, a Mexico expert at Southern Utah
University in Cedar City, Utah. "This has given the narcos a real
entree into politics, by either running for office themselves or
bankrolling candidates."

In addition, the gangs have evolved from simple drug-smuggling bands
into organized-crime conglomerates with broad business interests,
from local drug markets to extortion, kidnapping, immigrant smuggling
and control of Mexico's rich market in knockoff compact discs. "There
is more at stake than before. They need to control municipal
governments," says Edgardo Buscaglia, a professor of law and
economics at both Columbia University and Mexico's ITAM University.

A sign in Colima, Mexico, citing a drug gang's executioners praising
a candidate: 'The Zetas support you, and we are with you to the death.'

Because of the federal crackdown and the warfare between rival
cartels the drug traffickers also need more political allies than ever before.

Politicians who won't cooperate sometimes are threatened. On Monday,
in the drug-producing state of Guerrero, a grenade blew up a
sport-utility vehicle belonging to Jorge Camacho, a congressional
candidate from President Calderon's National Action Party, or PAN. A
message next to the destroyed car said, "Look, you S.O.B. candidate,
hopefully, you will understand it is better you get out, you won't
get a second chance to live."

Mr. Buscaglia says criminal groups' one-two punch of bribes and
threats has given them either influence or control in 72% of Mexico's
municipalities. He bases his estimate on observation of criminal
enterprises such as drug-dealing and child-prostitution rings that
operate openly, ignored by police.

According to a September 2007 intelligence assessment by the U.S.
Federal Bureau of Investigation, the governors of the states of
Veracruz and Michoacan had agreements with the Gulf Cartel allowing
free rein to that large drug-trafficking gang. In return, said the
report, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the cartel
promised to reduce violence in Veracruz state and, in Michoacan,
financed a gubernatorial race and many municipal campaigns across the state.

In Veracruz, the FBI report said, Gov. Fidel Herrera made a deal with
the cartel letting it secure a drug route through the state. In an
interview, Mr. Herrera said the allegation is "absolutely false, and
has no basis in fact -- it never happened." The PRI politician said
he has never had any dealings with a criminal organization and blamed
a rival political operative, whom he declined to name, for trying to
sabotage his career.

In Michoacan, the FBI report said, "in exchange for funding, the Gulf
Cartel will be able to control the port of Lazaro Cardenas, to
continue to introduce cocaine and collect a 'tax'" from other Mexican
drug-trafficking organizations.

Control of Ports

Lazaro Cardenas Batel, the Michoacan governor from the leftist PRD
party who was in the office when the FBI said the deal was made, says
the allegation is "totally false." Mr. Cardenas Batel, grandson of
the former Mexican president for whom the port is named, said Mexican
ports are controlled by federal agencies, so drug traffickers have
nothing to gain from bribing state officials in connection with them.

His successor, the winner of the 2007 election, is Leonel Godoy, also
of the PRD. He calls the FBI allegation "an infamy" with "not a shred
of evidence or any proof," and said he had never met or cut deals
with drug traffickers. Messrs. Cardenas Batel and Godoy both say they
had alerted authorities before the elections about the growing
infiltration of drug traffickers in Michoacan.

None of the three men -- Messrs. Cardenas Batel, Godoy and Herrera --
have been charged with any crime. U.S. intelligence documents have
occasionally proved unreliable in the past.

Police agents in Mexico City stand guard in May after a group of top
officials from Michoacan were detained due to their alleged ties to
'La Familia' drug cartel. Ten mayors and 17 other officials were detained.

The Gulf Cartel doesn't appear to be the only gang with alleged
influence in Michoacan officialdom. In May, soldiers and federal
police arrested 10 mayors, as well as 17 police chiefs and state
security officials, including a man who was in charge of the state's
police-training academy. They have been charged with collaborating
with "La Familia," the state's violent homegrown drug gang. Those
arrested, who have said they are innocent victims of political
vendettas, represented all three of Mexico's main political parties.
On Monday, three more people, including the mayor of Lazaro Cardenas,
were arrested and charged with the same offense, according to the
attorney general's office.

Five hundred miles to the north in the wealthy Monterrey suburb of
San Pedro Garza Garcia, a mayoral candidate from President Calderon's
party sparked a scandal in June when he was recorded telling a
gathering of supporters that security in the town was "controlled by"
members of one of Mexico's most fearsome drug cartels, the Beltran Leyva gang.

The candidate, Mauricio Fernandez, seemed to suggest he would be
willing to negotiate with the Beltran Leyvas if elected. "Penetration
by drug traffickers is for real, and they approach every candidate
who they think may win," Mr. Fernandez was recorded saying. "In my
case, I made it very clear to them that I didn't want blatant selling."

Mr. Fernandez has acknowledged the audiotape's authenticity, but says
his statements were taken out of context and that he had never met
with members of the Beltran Leyva cartel. He says the full tape
captures him saying he would not negotiate with the drug traffickers.
As the election nears, he leads polls by a wide margin.

Meanwhile, in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas, Mayor David
Monreal of the town of Fresnillo denied having anything to do with
14.5 tons of marijuana police found months ago in a
chili-pepper-drying facility owned by his brother. Mr. Monreal, who
plans to seek the governorship next year, said his political enemies
planted the mammoth stash.

In the campaign, the state of Mexico's economy appears to trump the
drug issue for many voters. The economy is shrinking amid slumps in
oil production, in exports to the U.S., in tourism and in remittances
from emigrants. Polls give the PRI, the party that ruled for seven
decades, an advantage of about six percentage points.

The governing party has made President Calderon's campaign against
drug traffickers its main theme, and polls show his policy of using
the military in the effort is widely popular. But they also show a
majority of Mexicans don't think he is winning the narco-war.

Drugs are certainly campaign fodder in the border state of Chihuahua,
where former Ciudad Juarez Mayor Hector Murguia is the PRI's
candidate for a congressional seat. Two years ago, Mayor Murguia
named as his chief of public security a businessman named Saulo Reyes
Gamboa. Last year, Mr. Reyes was arrested by U.S. law-enforcement
agents in El Paso, Texas, after allegedly paying someone he thought
to be a corrupt U.S. federal officer to help smuggle drug loads.
During the operation, federal agents found nearly half a ton of
marijuana in a Texas house, which they say Mr. Reyes had arranged to
smuggle from Mexico.

Mr. Reyes, who pleaded guilty and is now serving eight years in a
federal prison in Kentucky, couldn't be reached for comment. Mayor
Murguia says that he has had no involvement with the Juarez Cartel
and that Mr. Reyes never contributed "even five pesos" to support his
political career.

Despite the bad publicity, Mr. Murguia is leading in polls and is
expected to win Sunday -- not unlike Mr. Anguiano, the candidate in
Colima with the supposed endorsement from the Zetas.

Talking Frankly

In Colima, the candidate for governor from President Calderon's
party, Martha Sosa Govea, hasn't faced any narco-tie allegations. But
there has been plenty of comment about her protege, national assembly
candidate Virgilio Mendoza Amezcua, thanks to a tape of him talking
frankly about politics and drug traffickers, recorded by members of a
rival party he was trying to win over.

"You don't imagine how many 'nice' people have relations with those
drug-trafficking bastards, and through them, the bastards bring
things to you," he said on the tape. "They try to seduce you....They
got close to me like they get close to half the world, and they sent me money."

Mr. Mendoza declined to comment, but has previously denied he took
any money from the cartels. Ms. Sosa said the tape might have been
doctored, and in any case, "just because they have him on a tape
getting an offer of dirty money, there's still nothing on tape
proving he accepted it."

The tape was turned over to federal authorities to determine whether
it had been altered. Citing the proximity to the election, the
Attorney General's office declined to comment on any of the drug cases.

Colima, though largely exempt from the narco-violence raging in
neighboring states, has a reputation as a haven for traffickers, a
sleepy place where residents don't ask questions about rich new
neighbors. In the 1980s, Colima was home to a gentleman rancher from
Guadalajara whom everybody knew as Pedro Orozco. He spent lavishly on
schools, gave to charity and hung around with politicians.

In 1991, Mr. Orozco was gunned down in a firefight in Guadalajara,
then Mexico's drug capital. It turned out the generous man-about-town
was actually Manuel Salcido Uzueta, a top drug capo better known as
Cochiloco, meaning the Mad Pig.

Ever since, Colima residents have grown cynical about the influence
of drug gangs in politics. "Corruption? Drug ties? They say that
about everyone who runs for office. Who can you believe?" says
Salvador Ochoa, a local lawyer.

Ms. Sosa has been hammering her opponent, Mr. Anguiano, with claims
that he has links to drug trafficking. But, she concedes, the
response of many voters is, "Poor guy, why don't they just leave him alone?"