Mexico elects first Jewish president

(JTA) - Claudia Sheinbaum swept to victory in Mexico's presidential election Sunday, giving the country of more than 120 million a woman leader and a Jewish leader for the first time.

Sheinbaum's election makes Mexico by far the biggest country to have a Jewish head of state. Only Israel (9.5 million) and Ukraine (38 million) currently have Jewish leaders.

Sheinbaum's Jewish ties are centered mostly on her family story - her grandparents came to Mexico after fleeing persecution in Europe - and local Jews say she is not involved in Mexico's Jewish community today. Still, her election marks a departure in a country where the overwhelming majority of people identify as Catholic. She faced some antisemitism on the campaign trail when her detractors characterized her as not fully Mexican.

A climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, Sheinbaum, 61, campaigned on a promise to continue the liberal policies of her political mentor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Mexico's popular outgoing president. The preliminary vote total showed her winning nearly 60 percent of votes, more than twice as much as the first runner-up, who conceded.

"For the first time in 200 years of the republic, I will become the first female president of Mexico," Sheinbaum said in a speech delivered early Monday in Mexico City. "And as I have said on other occasions, I do not arrive alone. We all arrived, with our heroines who gave us our homeland, with our ancestors, our mothers, our daughters and our granddaughters."