The presidential race in Mexico is in danger of becoming a blowout

She would also establish a national investigative police and reduce the power of the military.

Security concerns are part of the campaign talk as Mexico prepares for its biggest election ever, with voters electing national offices down to the municipal level.

Laboratorio Electoral, an independent research institute that focuses on democracy and elections, has been doing this since June documented at least 67 attacks, threats, kidnappings and killings in connection with the elections. At least 39 people have been killed, 19 of whom were candidates for local office. A significant portion of the violence is linked to cartels and other criminal groups seeking to influence who holds office.

Looming over the race is the presidential campaign unfolding in the United States. While President Biden’s re-election would be a sign of continuity, a victory by Donald J. Trump, the Republican front-runner, could upend Mexican politics by turning the country’s dependence on trade with the United States into a resource of vulnerability.

Mr. Trump’s campaign is pursuing a proposal for a 10 percent universal tariff on imported goods. Such a tariff would “pose Mexico’s next president, whoever she is, with a challenge that AMLO and his predecessors have not faced,” said Andrew Rudman, director of the Mexico Institute at Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. .

Mr. López Obrador himself could be another destabilizing factor if his protégé wins the presidency. His plan, as he has stated several times, is to break away from politics and move to a farm in Palenque, in the southern state of Chiapas, that his parents left to him and his siblings.

Many in Mexico find it hard to believe that Mr López Obrador could simply disappear into the sunset.

“A character the size of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the ability he had to mobilize emotions and thereby make up for many of the shortcomings of his government – ​​well, Claudia Sheinbaum won’t have that,” said Blanca Heredia, a political analyst . “And it will be hard not to compare her to him, especially at first.”