Under the electoral law, parties must run women candidates for at least 30% of the seats they are contesting. There was a total of 228 women running for election.
The biggest female representation is in the PAN, which had 17 first-past-the-post winners. The PRD had 13 and the PRI 10, though another eight were elected on the PRI-PVEM alliance ticket.
The PAN has two female candidates for leading the party in congress, though the election is likely to be won by Francisco Barrio.
The PRI is fielding Elba Esther Gordillo to lead the party. She is facing the challenge of Manlio Fabio Beltrones and a former interior minister, Emilio Chuayffet.
The PRD has Dolores Padierna as a candidate for its leader. The party president, Rosario Robles, has said that she will resign, as she warned she would do if the party failed to get 20% of the votes.
In Mexico City, women will be presidents in five of the 16 boroughs.
The competition to become leader of the PRD in the Cámara includes some interesting names. The most striking is Manuel Camacho Solís. He was mayor of Mexico City under President Salinas and was deeply upset at being passed over by him for the presidential nomination. Other perredistas in the running include Pablo Gómez Alvarez, who was a leader of the student demonstrations in 1968 and subsequently jailed for his pains, and José Ortiz Pinchetti, who was part of the dissident wing of the PRI led by Roberto Madrazo's father, Carlos, in the 1960s. He was also part of the transition team for the Fox government in 2000.
The PRI's victory in Nuevo León stretched well beyond the gubernatorial election. It won a heap of districts in and around Monterrey, areas which have long been panista. The 11 electoral districts in the state, which split 7 PAN: 4 PRI in 2000, went 10 PRI: 1 PAN in 2003. Outside the state, the PRI also took León in the PAN bastion of Guanajuato. Here the PAN lost two congressional districts more than in 2000.
The stars who ran for congress got a dusty answer from the electorate. Actresses such as Laura Zapata were trounced. Zapata, who is the sister of Thalia, a singer, ran for the PAN but got only 25% of the vote, Another TV presenter, Jacqueline Arroyo, did even worse, getting only 7% of the vote for the PVEM.
Five parties lost their registration, and thus access to federal cash after the election. The five struck off the list for failing to get at least 2% of the votes were: México Posible, Partido Sociedad Nacionalista; Partido Alianza Social; Partido Liberal Mexicano and Fuerza Ciudadana.
One consequence of the election is that Diego Fernández de Cevallos, the PAN leader in the senate, is likely to stay in place. He has been a fierce critic of President Fox throughout the first half of the administration. If the PAN had done well in the elections, Fox could probably have forced Jefe Diego out and replaced him with the more biddable Carlos Medina Plascencia.
Jefe Diego has sabotaged a lot of Fox's initiatives, notably the (woolly) Indian rights legislation. The Fox government was blamed by the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional for failing to keep to its commitment to deliver what had been negotiated by the previous government, largely because of Jefe Diego's amendments. This led to a rupture between the government and the Zapatistas.
Roberto Madrazo, the president of the PRI, is vulnerable to pressure from priísta governors who control, to a large extent, the party machine. The governors are annoyed that Madrazo ignored them when drawing up the party lists.
There are some interesting names among the candidates elected by proportional vote. One of them is Tatiana Clouthier, the daughter of Manuel J. Clouthier: he had been a presidential candidate for the PAN. Another is Claudia Ruiz Massieu, the niece of President Salinas and the daughter of José Francisco Ruiz Massieu, who was assassinated in 1994: he probably would have become interior minister in Zedillo's government. Claudia is PRI deputy for the states of Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, Puebla and Morelos. A PAN deputy for the same area is Margarita Zavala, the wife of the former PAN leader in the lower chamber, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa.
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