Meet AMLO, Mexico’s Populist Presidential Candidate

Ahead of Mexico’s presidential election July 1, front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has grabbed all the attention. The leftist has held the lead at least since October, according to Bloomberg’s Poll Tracker. He’s promising to reduce poverty and end corruption and says he’ll take on U.S. President Donald Trump. While some voters like his anti-establishment message, investors fear he’ll end market-friendly policies.

He’s a 64-year-old former mayor of Mexico City who’s run for president twice before. Widely known by his initials, AMLO, he started his political career as a member of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and became its representative in his home state of Tabasco in 1983. Representing the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, he won the race to be Mexico City’s mayor in 2000. He gained popularity with programs that included monthly pensions for the elderly. After losing presidential bids as the PRD candidate in 2006 and 2012, he formed the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party in 2014. Since then, he’s toured every municipality in the country ahead of the 2018 presidential race.