His star faded in 1994, when he placed third, but shone again unexpectedly in 1997 when he became mayor of the capital in a landslide. Mexicans in the United States see both Fox and Cardenas as sympathetic to immigrant rights and interests. For example, both supported a bill that would permit nationals abroad to vote in future presidential elections. Each one met with immigrant activists, endorsed their campaigns and tried to get their respective parties to push the reform through the Mexican Congress. In contrast, the PRI's leading presidential candidate Francisco Labstida Ochoa, criticized the immigrant's right to vote and worked against it.
Immigrant activists have at least two good reasons to prefer an alliance of opposition forces.
For one, such alliances in state elections scored recent successes, in 1998 and on July 4 this year. The activists may have lost the battle to secure the vote for he time being, but they have created a thriving movement that is alive with cooperation among newfound allies. They must work to elect a friend to the presidency, and to ensure the defeat of the PRI in Congress. Still, achieving an alliance behind a single candidate is no easy task. Current laws make it difficult to vote in this way, and both Fox and Cardenas are often seen as stubborn and unwilling to place their individual presidential ambitions on hold.