To screams from his adoring female admirers, Enrique Peña Nieto bounds on to the stage. He hardly needs an introduction - his handsome face adorns posters throughout Mexico state, the nation's biggest, and polls predict his easy victory in next month's election for governor.
Mr Peña represents the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Mexico's ruling party for 71 years until Vicente Fox, of the centre-right National Action Party (PAN), was elected president in 2000.
The state, also known as Edomex (short for Estado de Mexico), is the nation's top political prize, and also a national snapshot that includes both the sprawling Mexico City suburbs and rural areas.
All three national parties - the PRI, the PAN and the leftwing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) - are well organised in the state, giving Edomex a reputation as political laboratory for Mexico.
PRI strategists believe the party must win the July 3 contest to regain the presidency next year. And Mr Peña appears on course to do so.
His rallies are well organised: his managers know the attendance well in advance. At a recent rally in the small town of Tezoyuca, almost all the children in an adjoining playground wore Peña T-shirts and caps. There are even phone-cards stamped with Mr Peña's handsome face.
Mr Peña's stump speech is free of ideology. He describes the PRI as a party of the pure political centre, rejecting both populism and market-led dogma. Instead, he makes promises. In each town, he signs a large declaration before the crowd, committing himself to a few specific projects for the area. In Tezoyuca, Mr Peña's announcement that he would bring electricity to one of the poorest areas met deafening cheers.
His strategy, while hardly novel, seems to be working, lifting him out of a three-horse race just two months ago, when campaigning began. The PAN's Ruben Mendoza had been a successful mayor of Tlalnepantla city, while the PRD's Yeidckol Polevnsky, head of the Canacintra employers' organisation, had expected to bask in the popularity of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico City's mayor, who saw off an impeachment effort this year. In March, a Grupo Reforma poll showed Mr Peña attracting 37 per cent, against Mr Mendoza's 39 per cent and Ms Polevnsky's 24 per cent. More recent polls give Mr Peña 44 per cent compared with Mr Mendoza's 35 per cent and Ms Polevnsky's 21 per cent.
Although all three candidates are running as pragmatists who can accomplish public works projects, the PRI has had a well-run and expensive campaign, while the other parties are in disarray. Official state electoral institute figures revealed that Mr Peña spent 66.3m pesos ($6.2m, €5.1m, £3.4m) in his first 45 days of campaigning, compared with 32.6m pesos for the PAN and 8.3m pesos for the PRD.
If the PRI ultimately outspends the legal limit of 216m pesos per candidate as the PAN and PRD allege it will the election could be annulled and re-run. Mr Peña dismisses the complaints. “That's an issue they're using because they're losing,” he says. “We haven't done anything illegal and we've stayed within the limits.”
Political analysts are surprised by the other two parties' failure to launch expensive campaigns, given how much they had to gain. The PAN failed to overcome divisions that saw two formal challenges to Mr Mendoza's nomination, and Marta Sahagún de Fox, the president's controversial wife, who originally planned to campaign for Mr Mendoza, has instead taken a low profile. Cidac, a Mexico City think-tank, said the PAN had been hurt by fall-out from the impeachment attempt. Meanwhile, the PRD had never raised the funds needed to compete: “They thought that with the popularity of López Obrador, it was sufficient to sit down and wait for the votes to rain down on them, and they were wrong.”
A broader lesson is that the PRI's political machine can never be discounted, and that next year's presidential election could be dirty.
