It was three weeks before his city’s mayoral election. Rogelio Portillo took the stage before a sea of voters, wearing a crisp white shirt with his party’s insignia, his hair slicked back.

“I want to thank everyone in the municipality of Huetamo who has supported the project of Morena,” Portillo said, naming Mexico’s ever-expanding ruling party. The crowd roared.

Portillo, 41, is Morena’s mayoral candidate in Huetamo. He’s also — as almost everyone in the city knows — a fugitive wanted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for allegedly conspiring to traffic drugs.

“Armed and dangerous,” the DEA website said, next to his mug shot.

And yet here he was, campaigning on behalf of the party of Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Less than a decade old, Morena appears poised to dominate the country’s politics as no party has in years. It’s expected to make further gains in thousands of congressional, state and local elections on Sunday.

“This is what motivates me. The people of Huetamo,” Portillo shouted to his supporters. “I’m your friend. I’m one of you.”

Retired and active DEA agents have watched his campaign from afar, slack-jawed.

At the heart of Morena’s ascent has been an anticorruption rallying cry that has resonated with voters tired of the country’s entrenched, scandal-ridden parties. López Obrador speaks almost daily about the graft of his predecessors and connections between the country’s elite and his opposition. But as the party has grown — commanding majorities in Congress and dominating state and local races — it has had to reckon with its own proliferating scandals.

When news of Portillo’s past made its way to Mexico City, the party declined to distance itself. He continued to campaign alongside Morena’s gubernatorial and congressional candidates. He remained near the top of the polls. Portillo denies the drug trafficking allegations.

News broke in May that a Morena mayoral candidate in the state of Yucatán, Clemente Julián Cano Chan, had been imprisoned in the United States in the 2010s for trafficking heroin. Cano declined requests for comment. He, too, remains the party’s candidate. Mexico’s electoral law does not allow candidates to run for office if they face criminal charges in the country, but neither pending nor previous charges in foreign countries serve as barriers.

In Oaxaca state, a Morena mayor, Lizbeth Victoria Huerta, was jailed last month in connection with the disappearance of a Mexican British activist. Morena had backed her candidacy for months as corruption allegations mounted. She remains in jail and could not be reached for comment.

In the municipality of Tejupilco, Morena’s mayoral candidate, Manuel Anthony Domínguez Vargas, was accused by the national electoral commission in 2020 of illegally distributing public resources as part of his campaign. He is also accused of threatening a local journalist, Nevith Condés, who was later killed, a case that remains unsolved. He could not be reached for comment.

“Morena right now offers powerful actors on the ground, including armed groups, the best chance at gaining access to the state in many areas,” said Falko Ernst, a senior Mexico analyst with the International Crisis Group. “The party hasn’t introduced any mechanisms to prevent this from happening. It’s being permitted.”

López Obrador, who campaigned on a security strategy of “abrazos, no balazos” — hugs, not bullets — has expanded the domestic role of the country’s military but has done little to limit the enormous political and physical power exercised by organized crime. He has been an outspoken critic of the DEA’s presence in Mexico.

As Morena fields scores of new candidates from cartel-controlled municipalities, a fundamental tension is emerging in the party’s expansion. A party that was born of López Obrador’s promises to fight corruption now risks having more of its elected officials and candidates exposed as having links to graft and drug trafficking.

Portillo appeared to be the most visible incarnation of that risk.

Even after the DEA allegations surfaced, he continued campaigning publicly. The party’s national leaders declined to condemn his candidacy. Top Morena officials in Michoacán state campaigned with him, inviting him onstage at their rallies.

“There’s nothing that was conveyed to Mexican authorities that would keep him from being our candidate,” said Mario Delgado, Morena’s national chairman. “We understand he has a lot of support in the community.”

In videos he posted on Facebook throughout May, Portillo appeared as unconcerned about the DEA locating him as he did about the party rejecting him.

In one, he rides a horse through the streets of Huetamo, positioning his cowboy hat on his head and waving to passersby.

“Hello to all of my friends in Mexico and in the United States,” he said, smiling from atop his steed, Diamante.

He held a rally in the central plaza of his childhood neighborhood. He pledged to plant 6,000 hectares of lemons in the municipality.

“I’m tired of so many promises, of so many lies they’ve told us,” he said. “That’s why I’m entering politics.”

“Portillo works,” the crowd chanted. “Rogelio does not quit.”

When he spoke to The Washington Post in early May, he denied any relationship with drug trafficking organizations. But he acknowledged he had been arrested for drug possession and spent several years in a Georgia prison.

“When you are young, you get carried away, you hang out with friends with bad motives, and I was arrested in possession of marijuana. That's the truth,” he said.

He lived in the United States during three different stretches between 1997 and 2006, he said. He worked at a factory in Santa Ana, Calif., a ranch in North Carolina and a clothing store in Houston. While in prison, he said, he earned his GED and learned English.

Portillo said the DEA allegation makes no sense. He said he has called the agency’s hotline in search of answers.

“I personally took on the task of calling those numbers to show them that I was the person they were looking for, that I was not hiding from anyone, that I had no problem,” he said. “Why did my photo appear on that page?”

The DEA did not respond to questions about why it has not acted against Portillo, given his public appearances. An administration spokeswoman, Katherine Pfaff, said she could not comment on Portillo’s case because the investigation remained open.

A federal arrest warrant for Portillo was issued in the Southern District of Texas in 2006, court documents show. Authorities implicated him in “conspiracy to possess with an intent to distribute a controlled substance.”

Portillo’s brother, Marcelino Portillo-Mendoza, is also named in those documents, and on the DEA’s fugitive list.

After Portillo was deported back to Mexico, he worked part-time on the administrative team of his family’s well-known norteño band, Beto y Sus Canarios. The group’s songs include “The King of Cocaine,” written from the perspective of a drug trafficker, and “My Last Contraband,” apparently about a smuggler’s final voyage. The lyrics, they insist, are works of fiction.

Portillo’s father, Edilberto, the group’s founder, served time in a Texas prison for drug trafficking. He now lives in Huetamo, where the power of the Portillo name is to many voters more relevant than the DEA’s interest in Rogelio.

“Even if [the allegations are real], that all happened in the U.S.," said Leonel Santibáñez Torres, a local columnist. “In our region, he’s always been an exemplary citizen with no known illegal activity. He’s a hard worker, his father is a hard worker, and he has been respectful with Huetamo’s people.”

Michoacán has in recent years been riven by organized crime, with turf wars between groups driving sharp spikes in violence. The most pronounced division is between the Jalisco New Generation cartel and the Familia Michoacana. Last year, a dozen bodies were found in an abandoned truck on the highway out of town. Some showed signs of torture. A note was found near the carnage.

“I forgot your Mother’s Day gift, but here is what I’m sending it to you.” It was signed “Familia Michoacana.”

The International Crisis Report this week described the connection between armed groups and political candidates in the area of Michoacán where Huetamo is located, known as tierra caliente — “hot land.”

“Criminal groups in tierra caliente have so much influence that candidates routinely approach them for support,” the report says.

In late May, toward the end of the campaign, Portillo began receiving threatening phone calls and text messages, ordering him to stop campaigning.

“It’s the narco government that continues ruling here,” said Erick Portillo, Rogelio’s brother and campaign manager.

“The candidate stood out in the polls, and (the opposition) was enraged and ordered the him to stop,” he said.

Morena continued supporting Portillo, and his name will remain on the ballot. At a party rally in the state capital supporters carried banners emblazoned with his face, the letters in Morena’s signature maroon: “Huetamo demands a free vote.”

Gabriela Martinez and Alejandra Ibarra Chaoul contributed to this report.

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