AP News, June 21st, 2007
An electoral court ruled on Wednesday that Tijuana's controversial mayor cannot run for governor of Baja California state because he did not finish out his term as mayor of the border city across from San Diego.
Jorge Hank Rhon, a colorful businessman with a fortune worth an estimated $500 million, a dog track and a private zoo of 20,000 animals, took a leave of absence as Tijuana's mayor in February in order to mount his bid to be governor.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party, greatly weakened since losing the presidency in 2000, was pinning its hopes for recovering the statehouse on the millionaire mayor, who said he would appeal the 2-1 decision to a federal electoral tribunal.
Under laws designed to prevent elected officials from jumping from one public post to another, the judges ruled Hank Rhon ineligible to run in Aug. 5 state elections. He was elected mayor in 2004 to a term that does not end until November.
Hank Rhon won the Tijuana mayorship despite accusations of drug and exotic animal smuggling, vote-buying and money laundering. One of his bodyguards was convicted in the 1988 murder of Tijuana columnist Hector Felix, who worked for the investigative weekly Zeta.
Hank Rhon has denied any ties to the killing, was never formally linked to it and says he believes the bodyguard, Antonio Vera, was unfairly convicted.
A 1999 report by the U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center also singled out Hank Rhon as an associate of drug smugglers. Then-Attorney General Janet Reno later dismissed the report, however, calling it an incomplete draft and saying its conclusions were "never adopted as official view."
Hank Rhon said he has boosted Tijuana's economy, installed 120-plus anti-crime cameras and jailed dozens of drug dealers. But his critics say unemployment remains high and killings by smugglers moving drugs through the city to the United States have not subsided.
