It looked like party time in Veracruz. Women in feathered bikinis gyrated to bouncy dance music praising the ruling party. A bused-in crowd of voters milled beneath a tent covering a full city block, waiting to celebrate the man who, if 87 years of history held true, had a strong shot at becoming the next governor.
The upbeat spectacle was part of efforts to burnish the battered image of the Institutional Revolutionary Party in Veracruz, a state it had never lost despite years of drug cartel violence, looted government coffers and multiple unsolved killings of journalists.
