Columnist Elliott Ruiz, writing for Millenio, one of the leading publications in Mexico, is predicting that the candidate for governor of Nuevo Leon, Clare Luz Flores, is going to lose the election. She was leading in the polls in a four-way race.
Then the startling revelation came, based on a story in Frank Report, that she was a coach in Nxivm. That by itself did not submarine her. It was her answers to questions of journalists denying that she ever heard the name Nxivm, only vaguely knew about a course and the people attending it from Monterrey, and knew nothing about Keith Raniere, that made her look the fool. Especially when she was being set up — since journalists already had a video of her in a Keith Raniere conversation that was filmed not in Monterrey but in Albany, world headquarters of Nxivm.
I think it is of importance because it shows that Nxivm and Raniere can swing elections – but not as the world’s self-proclaimed smartest man hoped. He wanted to install the president [Emiliano Salinas] and handpick various candidates and control the country. Now, just the dint of association with him is the death knell of candidates, fair or not.
As for Clare Luz Flores, her blunder was not so much that she had taken some courses – and more than a few since one does not become a coach in Nxivm with only one or two courses – but because she lied about it.
Of course, everyone is getting burned at the stake just for being associated with Nxivm, and perhaps she felt she had to lie; it was perhaps for her as simple as denying, for example, that she was a witch back in old Salem.
But because she was a political candidate for a serious office, and because there was evidence of her lies, she might have been better advised to tell the truth. It remains to be seen how badly she will be hurt by this when election day, June 6, comes around.
Here is a translation of Ruiz’s column in Milenio: Clara Luz’s campaign was not dropped, it was already thrown away.
If your Clare Luz Flores, it is hard to say you never heard of Nxivm when there is a picture of you at a Nxivm center in a yellow sash which indicates that you are a Nxivm coach. In the entire history of Nxivm, there never was a coach ever who never heard the name of the company in which she was coaching. Bad lie.
By Elliot Ruiz
Everything the Morena candidate for the governorship of Nuevo Leon [Clare Luz Flores] does is useless now; she is not going to win. She has made a series of childish mistakes that demonstrate her lack of political skill and calls into question her integrity. Beyond her relationship with Keith Raniere (the convicted NXIVM cult leader), Clara Luz Flores has made it clear that lying is her strategy, and who in their right mind is going to vote for a liar?
I hope she takes it easy and does not denounce me for gender violence. This is not about being a woman or a man, but about speaking the truth. All candidates have tails to step on, questionable backgrounds, and dark moments, but when it comes to communication, nothing is more effective than the truth.
It would have been enough for Clara Luz to say, when asked by journalists: “I met Raniere. I reached a certain level… I thought he was a spiritual leader. I was deceived, but I never participated in any act of sex trafficking or sexual exploitation.” Period. That was before a video surfaced that she knew existed. She attacked first, the PRI, the party she knows best.
It was an act of political suicide.
As if that were not enough, the former mayor of Escobedo [Luz Flores] canceled public events in the middle of the campaign and avoided the press. Mistake after mistake. With this, Clara Luz sends us a message: she has more to hide. As her words do not match her actions, her speech is losing strength every day… not that it ever had much strength.
I am getting to the point. At this moment the Morenistas [members of her political party] are hitting their heads against the wall. Who chose Clara Luz as their candidate? Her friendship with Mario Delgado, another old friend of NXIVM, was enough. Clara Luz saw the opportunity and took it. She knew that in the PRI, before her, there were 3 or 4 better-positioned candidates.
It is clear that [Clare Luz] Flores Carrales does not agree with the values of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador [current Mexican president], much less with the party’s platform. That is why she always makes it clear: “I am a candidate of the coalition, not of Morena”.
Clara Luz’s campaign was already thrown away when it was conceived, because she runs with a political party she does not agree with, and her allies are in the same situation: Víctor Fuentes, Felipe de Jesús Cantú, Mariela Saldívar… none of them believe in the Fourth Transformation. Hunger and the desire to eat came together, and for that reason, Morena may consider the governorship in Nuevo Leon as lost.
The only ones with real chances of winning are Adrian de la Garza and Samuel Garcia. Clara Luz will contend for the third or fourth position with Larrazabal. What will weigh more, the renewed PRI structure and its electoral fang or the more than one million followers of Mariana Rodriguez?
