In Race for Mexico's Presidency, Populist Tilts at a Privileged Elite

It is the fourth stop on a long, rainy day of campaigning, but when the leftist candidate rolls into the small coastal town of Tonalá, in southern Mexico, the soaked crowd comes alive with deafening chants of "Obrador! Obrador!"

The candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, gray-haired and slightly stooped, with a nasal voice and a boyish, freckled face, seems to suck up their energy, amplify it, and hurl it back in the form of a simple message. For too long, he booms, politicians, business owners and their families have gotten rich and evaded taxes while the working class has remained mired in poverty.

"The poor pay taxes on everything they buy," he says, cutting to the heart of his theme. "Those of the pure upper class, the influential, don't pay the taxes."

With less than three weeks before the July 2 election, Mr. López Obrador, a leftist former Mexico City mayor, is locked in a dead heat with Felipe Calderón, the conservative candidate from President Vicente Fox's National Action Party. After seesawing for weeks, all opinion polls now suggest the race is too close to call.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/world/americas/17amlo.html?hp&ex=1150516800&en=6f24e64ef8b29571&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Geez, sounds like America.