Contrary to their losses in much of the rest of Mexico, voters in the state of Sonora last week for the first time elected a governor from the National Action Party (PAN). Guillermo Padrés Elías had about 47.6 percent of the votes to 43.6 percent for Alfonso Elias of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), according to tabulations from the Federal Electoral Institute.

The PAN victory is being viewed as a rebuke of the handling by the PRI government under Gov. Eduardo Bours of a fire in June in a government-approved day-care center in Hermosillo that killed 48 children.

Padrés is due to be sworn-in as governor in September.

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Elsewhere in Mexico, results from the July 5 balloting showed the PRI staging a major comeback with about 36 percent of the votes for Congress to about 28 percent for the PAN. Most observers were blaming Mexico’s economic downturn and the deadly drug wars under PAN President Felipe Calderón for the PRI victories.

From 1929 to 2000, the PRI had dominated Mexico politics ruling the country with an iron-fist until the victory by the PAN’s Vicente Fox followed by Calderon in 2006.

It’s expected Mexico’s 500-member lower house of Congress will see the PRI possibly double the 106 seats it currently holds while the PAN will lose some of its 206 seats to the point that neither party can form an alliance without each other.