AMLO brushes off scandals ahead of recall referendum

There are only two weeks left before center-left Mexican President Andrés Manuel “AMLO” López Obrador faces the polls in a recall referendum he himself pushed, but the final stretch has been punctuated by political distractions for the Mexican leader.

First, reports about the lifestyle of AMLO’s son, José Ramón López, hit the press, in which it was alleged José Ramón stayed at the luxurious Texas property of a Baker Hughes executive, a firm known for its contracts with Mexico’s state-owned hydrocarbons giant Pemex.

Though officials quickly countered that Baker Hughes’ most profitable deals with Pemex were signed by previous administrations, the news put AMLO’s advocacy for personal austerity in a questionable light. It also led to a discussion about José Ramón’s income streams, which mostly depend on a salary from Daniel Chávez’s economic group, also close to the AMLO administration.

Then, the president had to deal with a number of internal fights between some of his top political allies, including former justice advisor Julio Scherer, former Secretary of Government Olga Sánchez Cordero (the two top Executive posts in judicial affairs), Prosecutor General Alejandro Gertz Manero, and even Supreme Court Chief Justice Arturo Zaldívar.

Mr. Scherer, known as AMLO’s right-hand man in several key political and judicial matters, wrote an open letter last week denouncing a “perverse plot” in which Ms. Sánchez, the sitting Senate president, and Prosecutor...