Clara Brugada or Morena's perfect student

Clara Brugada stops. She straightens her dress, adjusts her hair, now straighter, and takes a step forward. She is impeccable, she has done her homework and feels safe. She takes a breath and prepares to speak. The next 30 minutes she will explain in detail her proposal to tackle the problem of insecurity in Mexico City. At the end, she will apologize for going on so long. It was necessary to develop each edge, it will justify it. Then she will take a photo of herself, smiling, hugged by those who accompanied her from the first day and those who boarded the boat later. But she downplays it, she has the goal set in her head. The important thing is to pass the exam on June 2, and for that she will pull everything she has at hand. And she appears calm. If her anxiety eats away at her inside, it cannot be known, because both she and those around her know it: if they were in a place called Morena, she Brugada would be the perfect student for that mission.

The patio of the old convent of San Hipólito embraces it. A hundred happy people applaud her and shake her phones with stickers of a brush version of the candidate that they have attached to them when they enter. These are some intense days for Brugada, who is ahead in the polls, against his rivals Santiago Taboada and Salomón Chertorivski. All week he has chained one event after another. The day ahead is long, so the sneakers she has chosen to match her spring dress seem like a good choice. About her He looks at her feet as she gets off the stage, a few steps from her separating her from the hundreds of questions that the press has for her. She responds little and continues with the agenda.

The poll numbers reassure her, but they do not stop her, she tells this newspaper shortly after on the side of her truck, in the parking lot of the former convent. She is eating well, sleeping a little less. “The fatigue was at the beginning, now I got the hang of it,” she says. And that's good, because after the presentation of her security strategy she will have two private meetings, two rallies in the afternoon and will attend media interviews at night. She will be surrounded all day by her party colleagues, some of her, like former prosecutor Ernestina Godoy, who are also competing for public office. This has been the case since she won the election against Omar García Harfuch last year, and this will be the case until the elections arrive. No family in sight.

The nomination of Brugada as a candidate was a relief for Morena's hard core. The process was surrounded by controversy due to strong criticism from that orthodox sector of the party that did not welcome a police officer being the candidate. The licensed mayor of Iztapalapa has checked all the requirements to be a good choice. Among them, perhaps the most important, is the fact that she does not carry any major stain of corruption on her shoulders, one of the president's main rhetorical crusades. If she could be more Obradorist than López Obrador, she would be in that category. She though she wouldn't be the only one. Despite her discipline and her loyalty to the Fourth Transformation—before announcing her aspirations she asked for the green light from the National Palace—she is a woman of her own ideas. With a strong voice. Something that is not seen much these days when repeaters abound.

Brugada chooses his battles and his speeches. “What I say to people, that's mine,” she says. The dozens of advisors she has on her team recommend more about what the propaganda that floods the city should contain or what the

spots

on social networks should say, she says. But what she says at every rally is from her “hoarse chest.”

Every time she goes on stage she is prepared to convince everyone. She does not have any lucky rituals to accompany her. Just be her, be 100% Clara. Although her advisors have told this newspaper another version. Some have explained that the change of image that she has had, more formal clothing and straightened hair, has an electoral root: it is the response to the strategy chosen by Morena's presidential candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum. Behind it lies the idea that curly hair and informal style do not resonate with the middle and upper classes. In fact, Brugada's main rival walks around every day in a shirt and jacket, regardless of the destination.

—The look

has changed

in the campaign, why?

-In bell? No, since a little while ago.

—And why did you change it?

"Because I think I look good," he says and smiles.

On the list of mayors to conquer with her new style, the candidate has a very specific pending, the Benito Juárez mayor's office, the home of her main opponent and a delegation that has been electing the right for 20 years. But Benito Juárez was also at some point Brugada's home, where she was born. She then left and concentrated her political career in Iztapalapa, one of the poorest areas of the city. “A long time ago I decided that I was going to live my life somewhere else and I was going to work with people who have less,” she says, standing next to her vehicle. “I never did it for a political reason, my reasons were other, it was to combat inequalities from the territory, the option for the poor. Anyway, those were my reasons and that's what I did, I didn't care."

The busy day will go almost smoothly. Almost. While the candidate presents her security strategy in the old convent of San Hipólito, a familiar but unfriendly face steals the attention for a few minutes. Rafael Acosta Ángeles, known as Juanito, an eternal ghost lurking in Brugada, appears at the event with a homemade sign shouting “Iztapalapa stole me.” The two characters had a disagreement in 2009. Brugada was looking to be a candidate for mayor of Iztapalapa, but she was not authorized due to a legal issue. Then the party promoted Acosta's candidacy, under the promise that when she won she would have to give up her position so that she could take over. However, when she triumphed in the election, he refused to keep her word, until he was politically forced out.

—Does it often happen that Juanito follows you to events?

—Was it Juanito? Oh, I didn't even realize it. Well no, it's the first time. “Did he come to set her up?” He asks her team. No, well, that's the order. In other words, he is always with some party.

The incident will be detailed in the afternoon. The candidate will gain followers in some key mayoralties for Morena, those that lost in the 2021 elections, when the party suffered a significant defeat in the capital. In those points, such as Azcapotzalco or Miguel Hidalgo, they have reinforced the territorial campaign. In front of the Obrero Popular neighborhood market, Brugada will talk to people about what interests them: the family economy, scholarships and security. She will appear more as head of government than as a candidate. She will think so. And she will wish that the polls allow her to do so.