Senator Virgilio Mendoza Amezcua resigned on October 9, 2026 from the state leadership of the Partido Verde Ecologista de Mexico in Colima, after the party's national committee confirmed the electoral alliance with Morena in the state, and he called for building an opposition front with an eye on the 2027 governorship.
The resignation came after the PVEM's national committee confirmed that it is keeping the coalition with Morena in Colima and its backing of Rosa Maria Bayardo Cabrera as state coordinator, according to Proceso, which reported the senator's departure on October 11. Mendoza, a two-term former mayor of Manzanillo and a senator since 2024, made clear that leaving the state leadership does not necessarily mean leaving the party. The episode matters for the federal board: the bloc made up of Morena, the PVEM and the Partido del Trabajo depends on the PVEM's seats to reach the 86 votes a constitutional reform requires, two-thirds of the 128 senators. El Financiero published a count on October 12 that, in the scenario of Mendoza leaving the green parliamentary group, puts that bloc at 84 votes.
El Financiero's count starts from three blocs: 66 senators from Morena, 14 from the PVEM and 6 from the Partido del Trabajo, for a total of 86, the minimum for a qualified majority. With Mendoza out of the caucus and the opposing vote of Luis Armando Melgar, the only green senator who votes against the allies, the PVEM contributes 12 and the total falls to 84, two fewer than the 86 that represent two-thirds of the 128 seats. Proceso notes that Mendoza did not announce his departure from the parliamentary group or any change of position on the initiatives of the ruling bloc. At the same time, he invited PRI member Mely Romero Celis, PAN member Riult Rivera Gutierrez and Margarita Moreno of Movimiento Ciudadano to build a front for 2027. As of October 10, no formal agreement for the front had been found.
The next checkpoint is the constitutional reform agenda in the Senate, where the bloc needs 86 votes with full attendance, and Colima's 2027 electoral process, in which Mendoza acknowledged that he aspires to the governorship. The decision on whether he stays in the green caucus keeps the bloc's arithmetic open.
This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.