MEXICO CITY — The front-running candidate for governor in the violence wracked border state of Tamaulipas was assassinated Monday.
Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez Mont suggested that the killing of candidate Rodolfo Torre of the Institutional Revolutionary Party was the work of warring drug cartels whose battles have caused hundreds of deaths in recent months in the Gulf coast state.
“These events reinforce the need to combat organized crime on all fronts,” Gomez Mont said at a news conference. He refused to take questions.
President Felipe Calderon also blamed cartels for the assassination, saying the gangs are trying to infiltrate the election process.
Gunmen ambushed Torre’s vehicle as he headed to a campaign event near the state capital, Ciudad Victoria. At least four other people traveling with him were killed.
“We firmly demand a rapid investigation of these events ... and punishment for those responsible,” party leader Beatriz Paredes said in a statement. “Nothing is going to intimidate us.”
Local police are leading the investigation into the shooting with the support of federal prosecutors, said Ricardo Najera, a spokesman with the federal attorney general’s office.
Attacks and threats against candidates in the run-up to Sunday’s elections have intensified fears that cartels may be trying to buy off politicians and kill or intimidate those they oppose.
Calderon said the Torre’s death shows “organized crime is a permanent threat” and called on Mexicans to “close ranks to confront it.”
He said organized crime “is trying to interfere in the decisions of citizens and in election processes.”
He convoked an emergency meeting of the security Cabinet on Monday, Gomez Mont said.
Calderon’s National Action Party - the other main party in Tamaulipas - said it would suspend the remaining three days of campaigning by its own gubernatorial candidate. But National Action Party leader Cesar Nava said he hoped the elections could go forward Sunday. Twelve states are holding elections for governors, mayors and local posts.
Tamaulipas, in Mexico’s northeast, borders Texas along the Rio Grande Valley, with the Gulf of Mexico to the east.
The state is one of the main trafficking corridors for drugs heading to the U.S. market, and in recent months has been the scene of bloody shootouts between the Gulf cartel and its rival, the Zetas drug gang. The two former allies split several months ago, and have since been battling for turf.
Television footage from the scene of Monday’s attack showed several vehicles and sheet-covered bodies along the side of the highway.
Gomez-Mont said the killings “fill all of society with indignation” and pledged to “find those responsible for these detestable acts, and bring them to justice.”
Torre, 46, is the highest ranking election candidate killed in Mexico since presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, also from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, was assassinated in 1994.
A physician, he had served as the state’s health secretary from 2005 to 2009. He was married and had three teenage children.
Torre was leading by a wide margin before the Sunday election. He had 61 percent support, compared with 30 percent for National Action Party candidate Jose Julian Sacramento, according to a June 12-16 poll by Mexico City-based Consulta Mitofsky that had a margin of error of 1 percentage point.
Campaigning on the slogan “So that you’ll be better off,” Torre was heading from Ciudad Victoria to the border city of Matamoros to accompany his party’s mayoral candidates in the closing of their campaigns Monday.
In May, gunmen killed National Action Party candidate Jose Guajardo Varela, who had received warnings to drop his bid for the mayorship of Valle Hermoso, a town about 30 miles south of Brownsville, Texas.
Information for this article was contributed by Olga R. Rodriguez and Mark Stevenson of The Associated Press and by Jens Erik Gould, Andres R. Martinez, Jose Enrique Arrioja, Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, Jonathan J. Levin and Jonathan Roeder of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 06/29/2010