Nation & World

MEXICO CITY — Mexico's ruling party on Sunday chose a former congresswoman to run for president, the first time a major party has nominated a woman to compete for the nation's top office.

The vote by the National Action Party, also known as PAN, for Josefina Vazquez Mota over two other candidates sets the race for the July 1 presidential election. The two other major parties already selected candidates.

Vazquez Mota, 51, faces an uphill climb against former Mexico state Gov. Enrique Peña Nieto, the front-runner in the polls who could return Mexico's long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to power after a 12-year hiatus.

The leftist Democratic Revolution Party chose Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is making his second run after a razor-thin loss in 2006 to President Felipe Calderón. Mexico limits its presidents to a six-year term.

Vazquez Mota is considered Peña Nieto's strongest potential challenger, a personable, charismatic candidate who like Peña Nieto is good on the stump. Though Mexican voters in general seem weary of the ruling party after presidents Vicente Fox and Calderón, the novelty of a woman candidate could boost party appeal.

"It injects a certain new note of uncertainty. There's never been a strong female presidential candidate for any other major party before," said Eric Olson, a senior associate at the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute. "It adds that historical element and maybe some excitement."

Others argue that the party is too battered by a bloody drug war started in 2006, stalled reforms and continuing corruption during 11 years in power.

"Josefina arrives with a weakened party," said Soledad Loaeza, a political-science professor in Colegio de Mexico who has studied the evolution of the PAN. "The electorate is not willing to see her as an alternative."

José Espina, president of the party's election commission, says Vazquez's 55 percent lead in Sunday's primary is irreversible. He said 87 percent of the ballots have been counted.

More than 400,000 people voted in the PAN primaries. Her victory was greatly anticipated in opinion polls.

She was not Calderón's choice to compete for the party, though he appointed her education secretary after she served as his campaign manager in 2006. The party establishment had supported former Finance Secretary Ernesto Cordero. But the party's rank-and-file membership handed her a victory from the polls.

Calderón was not the choice of his predecessor, Vicente Fox, whose election in 2000 booted the PRI out of office after 71 years of single-party rule.

Vazquez Mota trails Peña Nieto by nearly 20 points in the polls.