Reuters In his campaign to be Mexico's next president, Enrique Pena Nieto has struggled to name a single book he has read, upset some women with a sexist remark and had to admit he fathered two children outside marriage. But none of that has seriously threatened his hopes of winning the election on July 1. The telegenic Pena Nieto carries the hopes of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century until it lost power in 2000. Six years ago, it suffered its worst ever election defeat and many wondered then whether it would even survive. Instead, the party has regrouped behind the 45-year-old Pena Nieto and capitalized on discontent with the conservative ruling party to present itself as the only solution to Mexico's troubles. Pena Nieto, a former governor of the State of Mexico near the capital, has a big lead in opinion polls and analysts say only a major scandal could derail him in the election campaign that formally starts on Friday. “All Pena Nieto needs to do is go on holiday to Hawaii, come back, vote, and he's in,” said Javier Oliva, a political scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “He just has to avoid making mistakes.” The former law student, who has led polls for the presidential race for over two years, has already made a series of gaffes in the past four months. But he has so far survived them without seeing a significant drop in support. Critics poured scorn on him when, speaking at a book fair in December, he fumbled a question to name any books that had influenced him. After stumbling badly, he finally managed to identify two — the Bible and a novel by disgraced British author and politician Jeffrey Archer. Soon after, Pena Nieto got the minimum wage wrong and upset some female voters by telling an interviewer “I'm not the woman of the house” when asked the price of corn tortillas, a staple of the Mexican diet. Then in January, he admitted he had cheated on his first wife and fathered two children with other women. That wife later died. Despite the blunders, polls on Monday showed Pena Nieto holding a lead of between 17 and 19 percentage points over Josefina Vazquez Mota, the candidate of President Felipe Calderon's conservative National Action Party, or PAN. Political analyst Jorge Zepeda said Pena Nieto had benefited in part from a recovery in the PRI's stock. And the prevalence of “macho” attitudes in Latin cultures like Mexico means that womanizing is often not damaging to a politician, he added. “There's a tendency not to punish successful men for having several women,” he said. “It can be seen as a sign of success.” When it ousted the PRI in 2000, hopes were high that the PAN could deliver on its promises to end the corruption and authoritarian rule of its forerunner. There have been some advances but Mexico has lagged regional peers in economic growth, drug gang violence has soared and the PAN failed to push ma ny of it s main reform proposals through Congress. Calderon vowed to tackle poverty and bring violent drug gangs to heel when he took office in December 2006. Instead, the number of Mexicans living on 2,100 pesos ($170) a month or less leapt by more than 12 million to almost 58 million between 2006 and 2010. And the drug war intensified, claiming 50,000 lives in the last five years. __
