Mexican Agriculture Minister Jose Calzada said on Friday he had stepped down to join the presidential campaign of Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate Jose Antonio Meade. "We're off with our friend (Jose Antonio Meade) on his campaign," Calzada said on Twitter not long after the Mexican presidency had announced he had resigned from his post.
Calzada has been a strong proponent of maintaining the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and his staff said he forged a solid relationship with his US counterpart Sonny Perdue during the ongoing negotiations to rework the accord.
Meade's campaign has struggled to gain traction, and he is trailing in third in most of the latest opinion polls, well behind the front-runner, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Calzada's move also comes just before the PRI is due to finalize its lists of candidates for the new Congress. That Congress will be elected alongside the next president on July 1, and Calzada would have needed to resign to be eligible.
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