MEXICO CITY - Mexico's presidential election race now appears wide open after the leftist favorite threw away a huge lead by squabbling with President Vicente Fox and refusing to join a televised debate with his rivals.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a former Indian rights activist who promises heavy spending on Mexico's poor, had looked like a safe bet for victory in the July 2 election but his lead has evaporated over the past month.
Instead of sticking to his campaign program, he alienated voters by angrily telling the popular Fox to "shut up" and comparing him to a "chachalaca," a wild bird known for its loud, irritating squawk.
"Lopez Obrador may be digging his grave with his own tongue," said George Grayson from the College of William and Mary in Virginia, the author of a new book on the leftist.
Felipe Calderon, the candidate of Fox's ruling National Action Party, or PAN, now has all the momentum and took the lead for the first time in a new opinion poll Tuesday.
The poll in the respected newspaper Reforma showed Calderon with 38 percent support and Lopez Obrador with 35 percent. That marks a dramatic swing from last month, when Reforma had Lopez Obrador ahead by 10 percentage points.
Other recent polls also showed Lopez Obrador slumping, although still remaining just ahead of his conservative rival.
The election will determine whether Mexico joins a growing number of Latin American nations moving to the political left or whether it stays firmly allied to the United States, its northern neighbor and dominant trading partner.
Lopez Obrador, 52, has promised to end two decades of Washington-backed free market reforms and pump money into welfare programs and infrastructure projects.
Way Ahead
Similar policies won him huge support when he was mayor of Mexico City and he had consistently led presidential opinion polls for the last three years despite fears among business leaders that he might ruin Mexico's economic stability. Only last month, he declared he was "politically indestructible".
Calderon's surge has changed all that and he hopes to gain even more ground at the first televised presidential debate on Tuesday evening.
"I feel in a very good moment in the campaign, rising, shaping up toward first place, entering the final stretch, and with an advantage," the 43-year-old Calderon told supporters at a weekend rally in the impoverished state of Oaxaca. "And the debate is precisely what will allow me to define with more clarity an advantage toward the final part of the campaign."
Lopez Obrador refused to take part in the debate, apparently believing he was so far ahead he didn't need to risk a poor showing, but pollsters say that has backfired as rival candidates accuse him of cowardice.
The PAN has rolled out a series of campaign ads comparing Lopez Obrador to Venezuela's populist President Hugo Chavez and portraying him as a danger to the country.
Lopez Obrador accuses rivals of lying about his proposals in a "dirty war", and he said on Tuesday the latest Reforma poll was biased in favor of Calderon.
"I say to the people we are 10 points ahead and I do not lie," he said on his morning television show. He also said he would take part in the second presidential debate on June 6.
But Lopez Obrador's air of invincibility has disappeared and analysts say he can only halt the decline if he controls his temper and sticks to his campaign plan.
"When you have had a big lead since polling began and all of a sudden you are being seriously challenged and perhaps being passed in the horse race, it is difficult to adjust and get back on message," said Grayson.
Feeds