Not only is Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo the first Jew, but she is also the first woman to be elected as mayor of Mexico City.
By JONATHAN WEBER ROSENUpdated: JULY 3, 2018 04:11Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, presidential candidate of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), offers a floral tribute to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the expropriation of Mexico's oil industry, next to Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, candidate for Mexico City Mayor by the National Regeneration(photo credit: GINNETTE RIQUELME/ REUTERS)
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, running on the slogan "Together we will make history," broke tradition, being elected on Sunday as the first Jewish mayor of Mexico City, the largest city in North America, before New York City.Greater Mexico City is home to more than 21 million people and is the largest Spanish-speaking city in the world, with a Jewish minority population estimated to be no more than 50,000.Not only is Sheinbaum the first Jew, but she is also the first woman to be elected as mayor of Mexico City. In a poll by the Mitofsky firm, Sheinbaum won with a limited majority consisting of no more than 55.5% of the vote.Sheinbaum is a scientist, activist and teacher who received her doctorate degree in energy engineering and physics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).Born in 1962, Sheinbaum is the grandchild of Mexican immigrants from Lithuania and Bulgaria.In 2017, her political career began when she was elected as district mayor of Mexico City's Tlalpan neighborhood which consisted of over nine million constituents.Sheinbaum has served as Secretary of the Environment since 2015 and has a record of working in government and intergovernmental organizations pertaining to climate change.She was one of the first Mexican politicians to break away with Lopez Obrador's splinter movement from the mainstream Mexican left-wing party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in 2014.
