McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — The governor of the Mexican state of Nuevo León has dropped his bid for president as an opposition hopeful.
Gov. Samuel Garcia announced this weekend that he would not run to succeed Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who cannot run again because Mexican only law allows presidents to have a single six-year term.
“I have decided to not participate in the electoral race for President of the Republic,” Garcia said in a statement from the Nuevo León government, which was made public by his center-left Citizens’ Movement (MC) party.
Garcia posted on X, the platform formerly Twitter, that he is halting his campaign in order to retain his position as governor of the seventh-largest state, and to focus on improving Nuevo León.
“I promised them that I was not going to leave Nuevo León in the clutches of old politics,” Garcia tweeted with a video in Spanish on Saturday. “And although we turned Mexico upside down and we were going to win the presidency, the most important thing is Nuevo León.
The state includes a narrow strip of border, about 11 miles long, west of Nuevo Laredo and includes the Laredo–Colombia Solidarity International Bridge that connects to Laredo, Texas.
Garcia is just 35 years old and has been the governor since 2021. After he announced he was running for president in October, it triggered a political fight over who would replace him.
On Nov. 29, the state’s legislature voted to appoint Luis Enrique Orozco Suarez as interim governor to take over from Garcia. Orozco is associated with Adrian de la Garza, a former gubernatorial candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Nuevo León Gov. Samuel Garcia, of Mexico, met April 13, 2022, with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in Laredo, Texas, to sign an agreement to stop mandatory truck inspections by Texas DPS troopers if Mexico increased commercial truck inspections south of the border. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report File Photo)
Garcia speaks English and has come to the United States numerous times and met with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other officials, including in April 2022 when both leaders signed a memorandum of understanding that Mexican forces in Nuevo León would inspect trucks south of the border in order to lift mandatory state inspections by DPS troopers that were causing delays at the Colombia Solidarity International Bridge.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.
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