MEXICO CITY - Mexico City's popular left-wing mayor stepped down on Friday to run for president with a promise to overhaul government and help the poor.
In a farewell speech as mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador boasted of his achievements in the chaotic capital city and said he would take his policies of social welfare and public works spending to the national stage.
"I am going to fight along with many Mexicans, women and men, for a true transformation of Mexico," he told thousands of cheering supporters in a plush city auditorium normally used for rock concerts and ballet performances.
An austere former Indian rights activist, Lopez Obrador is Mexico's most popular politician and holds a wide lead over his rivals in polls for the presidential elections next July.
He will now take his campaign to the country, trying to build support in areas where his leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution has little or no presence. Analysts say that effort will be key to the election.
Lopez Obrador has sky-high approval ratings in Mexico City for investing in public transport and new highways, handing out pensions to everyone over 70 years old and giving allowances to disabled people, poor children and single mothers.
But he is intolerant of criticism, and business leaders fear high spending could ruin Mexico's hard-won economic stability.
They also accuse him of adding to the capital's debt pile and of failing to tackle violent crime.
Lopez Obrador defended his record on Friday and accused his rivals of lying to keep him out of the presidential palace.
"What they are trying to do is block an alternative project for the nation and perpetuate the never-ending corruption and privileges," the mayor said.
More for the Poor
His promises to spend much more on the poor and less on the government bureaucracy play well with ordinary Mexicans tired of seeing politicians get rich in public office.
"He would be a magnificent president. What he did here can be expanded to the whole country," said Policarpio Garcia, a middle-aged security guard who traveled from the outskirts of the vast capital city to hear the mayor's speech.
Lopez Obrador, 51, lives in a modest apartment and owns a standard four-door sedan. If elected president, he has promised to cut his own salary in half and scrap clothing allowances and other benefits for senior government officials.
But he worried many by lashing out at organizers of a march to protest crime in a city notorious for its kidnap gangs. He accused them of being part of a plot to undermine him.
"The main legacy Lopez Obrador leaves us is his two-headed obsession: on one side, to be president, and on the other denying the brutal deterioration of the capital city's nerves," said Raul Cremoux, a columnist in the newspaper El Universal.
An election victory for the mayor would mark a clear swing to the left and could end two decades of free-market reforms that have brought Mexico closer to the United States but done little to cut poverty. Four out of 10 Mexicans are poor.
While he rails against those policies, he has also tried to reassure financial markets with promises of fiscal discipline.
The mayor earlier this year survived a clumsy government effort to put him on trial in a land dispute. The case could have knocked him out of the presidential race but it was finally dropped following a massive march of his supporters.
President Vicente Fox, a conservative who ended 71 years of often authoritarian one-party rule in Mexico in 2000, is barred by the constitution from seeking re-election.
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