Mexico City, September 7 (RHC)-- Mexico’s governing party has named former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum as its candidate for the 2024 presidential elections, putting her in pole position to become the country’s first woman leader.

Mexico will go to the polls on June 2nd next year to elect a successor to popular incumbent Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), who is barred by the constitution from serving a second six-year term.

Sheinbaum, 61, was chosen on Wednesday following a series of surveys of members of the governing Morena party.  The party’s national council president, Alfonso Durazo, said Sheinbaum beat former Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, her closest rival, by double figures in five party surveys.

“Today the Mexican people decided,” a smiling Sheinbaum told supporters to shouts of “president, president, president” at a news conference where she was declared the candidate.  “We will win in 2024,” she said, dressed in her party’s signature purple.

Sheinbaum is a close ally of President Lopez Obrador and Morena controls 22 of Mexico’s 32 states, giving her a distinct advantage.  Last week, a broad opposition coalition selected female lawmaker Xochitl Galvez as its candidate.

Trained as an environmental scientist, Sheinbaum sits solidly on the left of the ideological spectrum and represents the continuation of AMLO’s social agenda.  She has frequently echoed his condemnation of the neoliberal economic policies of earlier Mexican presidents, blaming them for the country’s gaping inequality and high levels of violence.

Galvez, meanwhile, is representing the Broad Front for Mexico, a coalition of the conservative National Action Party, the small progressive Democratic Revolution Party, and the PRI.  Galvez caucuses with the National Action Party in the Senate but is not a member.