Mexican Candidate for Governor Is Assassinated

By MARC LACEY

MEXICO CITY — A popular candidate for governor of Tamaulipas State who had made increased security his prime campaign pledge was killed along with at least four others Monday morning when gunmen opened fire on his motorcade as he headed to a campaign event, the authorities said. The killing of the candidate, Rodolfo Torre Cantú, 46, drove election-related violence in Mexico to a peak unseen since 1994, when a presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, wasassassinated.

Mr. Torre’s death followed the killing of a mayoral candidate and that of an activist during a get-out-the-vote effort. Explosives have been thrown at two separate campaign offices.

Immediate suspicion in the Torre case fell on drug cartels since Tamaulipas, a northeastern state bordering Texas on the gulf coast, has been the site of fierce fighting in recent months between rival trafficking organizations, the Zetas and their former allies, the Gulf Cartel.

Mr. Torre, a burly, gray-haired surgeon and federal congressman, was engaged in a last-minute flurry of campaigning for elections scheduled on July 4 when the attack occurred. Representing the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or P.R.I., which currently controls Tamaulipas, Mr. Torre had been leading in polls.

Two campaign vehicles carrying the candidate, aides and security to the airport outside the state capital, Ciudad Victoria, were found after 10 a.m. In images broadcast on television, the windows had been shattered by bullets, the doors were open and five or six bodies were sprawled in the roadway and on the shoulder. Mr. Torre, whose face was painted on the side of the bullet-riddled vehicles, was among the dead, the authorities said.

“These reprehensible acts fill all of society with indignation,” said Interior Minister Fernando Gómez Mont, noting that President Felipe Calderón had immediately convened his security advisers. Mr. Gómez Mont, appearing rattled at a news conference, said he was immediately heading to Tamaulipas, to help ensure that the perpetrators were brought to justice.

“We cannot permit these kinds of acts that affect the peace and security of Mexicans,” he said. “We repeat our vow to fight organized crime in all its aspects.”

On Mr. Torre’s campaign page on Facebook, supporters expressed shock and indignation. “I feel such anger and impotence,” wrote one backer. “How long are these things going to happen?”

Over the weekend, another killing had shocked Mexicans. A popular singer who often sang of the drug trade, Sergio Vega, known as El Shaka, was killed as he drove his red Cadillac Saturday night in Sinaloa State. Hours earlier, he had denied reports that he had been shot to death.

“It’s happened to me for years now, someone tells a radio station or a newspaper I’ve been killed, or suffered an accident,” Mr. Vega told an entertainment Web site. "And then I have to call my dear mother, who has heart trouble, to reassure her.”