Westside Man Apparently a Winner in Mexico Voting

MEXICO CITY —  A West Los Angeles man apparently will become the first person living abroad to be elected to the Mexican Congress.

Eddie Varon Levy, a 42-year-old businessman, is expected to join Mexico’s lower house under the banner of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which lost its grip on the presidency for the first time in 71 years.

The National Action Party’s (PAN) presidential candidate, Vicente Fox, swept to victory, while enough PAN congressional candidates won to give the party its first plurality in the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies. The PRI still has a majority in the Senate.

Despite the PRI’s electoral thumping in Sunday’s historic election, Varon Levy is expected to take a seat in Congress under this country’s system of proportional representation.

Of the 500 seats in Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies, 300 representatives are elected directly. Two hundred seats are apportioned to the various political parties based on the percentage of votes they garner in the election for the Chamber of Deputies. Varon Levy did not run to represent a specific district in Mexico but was listed by the PRI among the party’s slate of proportional candidates. He appears to have a good chance of receiving one of about 50 proportional seats won by the party.

Varon Levy feels certain he will be seated in the Chamber of Deputies once all the votes from Sunday’s election are counted. “It’s a breakthrough. I am going to be in the trenches fighting for Mexicans living abroad,” said Varon Levy. “The PRI is not dead. There’s going to be a self-cleansing job.”

Of three Mexicans living abroad who ran for Congress, Varon Levy is the only one who appears to have won. Jose Jacques Medina of Maywood and Raul Ross of Chicago both ran unsuccessfully under the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) banner.

Among Varon Levy’s goals as a member of the Chamber of Deputies would be to establish a special attorney’s office to defend immigrants’ rights, to look for ways to reduce high fees paid for money orders and transactions on money immigrants send to Mexico and to improve the country’s consular services.

He also favors allowing Mexican citizens living in other countries to vote abroad. That would seem to go counter to the will of the PRI majority in the Senate, which last year blocked efforts to legalize such voting on grounds it is unfeasible.

The West Los Angeles resident also favors the addition of 25 seats to the Mexican Congress that would go to deputies elected by emigrants abroad.

Varon Levy’s company, International Consulting & Legal Research, works with Los Angeles law firms.

Varon Levy ran unsuccessfully in 1997 for the Mexican Congress and has served as PRI party president in Los Angeles.

A legal resident of the United States since 1978 and a graduate of Cal State Long Beach, Varon Levy said he has no intention of giving up his home and family life in Los Angeles. Varon Levy, who also has a domicile in Mexico, said he expects to commute to Mexico City for congressional sessions.