By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 7 1998; Page A09

Mexico's ruling party suffered a sharp blow in election results reported today, losing the governor's race in the rural, northern state of Zacatecas, long considered one of the party's most impervious strongholds. But it staged a startling comeback in another important northern state, Chihuahua.

The hard-fought governors' races reaffirm that Mexico is becoming a more open, multi-party state after seven decades of continuous rule by the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, at almost every level of government.

With 93 percent of the vote counted in Zacatecas, Ricardo Monreal, the candidate of the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), held a solid lead over PRI candidate Jose Marco Antonio Olvera. Other candidates trailed far behind in returns from Sunday's voting.

Monreal, 37, was a highly regarded member of the ruling party until earlier this year, when party power brokers handpicked Olvera as their nominee for governor. Claiming he was cheated out of the nomination by backroom wheeling and dealing, Monreal resigned from the PRI and immediately became the consensus candidate of the leftist PRD and various smaller parties.

In another closely watched race, the PRI reclaimed the governorship of the northern state of Chihuahua after losing it six years ago to the right-center National Action Party (PAN). The PRI's victory marked the first time it had recaptured a governorship after losing it to the opposition.

In returns from the third gubernatorial ballot Sunday, in the northern state of Durango, the PRI was leading by a large margin as most analysts had predicted. All three states also held elections for legislative assemblies and local mayors' offices, but as of late today the returns were not conclusive.

The governors' races illustrate the three-way split in the electorate here among the dominant parties -- the long-ruling PRI, the leftist PRD and the rightist PAN. No party won more than 50 percent of the vote in any of the contests.

The elections were the first of 10 gubernatorial ballots to be held in Mexico this year. Analysts said the cumulative results will provide clues to voter sentiment in advance of the presidential election scheduled for 2000, in which opposition candidates believe the have a strong chance of winning the country's highest office for the first time in more than 70 years.

Mexico's ruling party, saddled with a legacy of corruption and economic mismanagement, has been losing more and more of its traditional support in recent years. New electoral reforms also have made elections freer and fairer and given opposition parties a better shot at winning.

The PRI had its most disappointing showing ever in midterm elections last year, losing its majority in Mexico's lower house of Congress for the first time since the party was founded in 1929. And it was thrashed in the race for mayor of Mexico City -- considered the most important elective office in the country after the presidency -- by PRD candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas.

Although losing the Zacatecas governor's race was a major setback for the PRI, recapturing the governorship in Chihuahua should give the ruling party a major psychological boost, while seeming to underscore the fading popularity of the PAN. PAN candidate Ramon Galindo Noriega, a former mayor of Ciudad Juarez whose fortunes were hurt by rampant crime and drug trafficking in the border city, conceded defeat late this afternoon to the PRI's Patricio Martinez Garcia.

With 56 percent of the votes tallied in Durango, the PRI's Angel Sergio Guerrero had won 40.1 percent, the PAN's Maria Rosario Castro Lozano 31.6 percent, the Labor Party's Alejandro Gonzalez Yanez 19.5 percent, and the PRD's Maximo Gamiz Parral 8.8 percent.

Analysts said that the Zacatecas and Chihuahua contests contain an important lesson for Mexico's political parties that could serve them well in the 2000 race -- party affiliations are becoming less important than attractive, charismatic candidates, preferably selected through an open nominating process.

For instance, in contrast to Zacatecas, where the PRI's candidate was chosen by the state's current and former governors, the party's candidate in Chihuahua was selected though an open primary -- one of the first ever held in Mexico. That helped ensure the candidate was a popular, consensus choice, and -- just as important -- invigorated the party rank-and-file.

"In this new political environment, charisma and personality count for a lot," said Sergio Sarmiento, a political analyst and news director with the Television Azteca network. "In Zacatecas, the candidate was decided by Mexico City, without any kind of consulting with people in the state. In contrast, the PRI had an open primary in Chihuahua . . . and was able to wrest away the governorship from the PAN."

Correspondent Molly Moore contributed to this report.