Josefina Vázquez Mota

In 2011, she left the legislature when she won her party’s nomination as candidate for president. She won the nomination over Calderón’s choice of Ernesto J. Cordero, with 55% of the vote in the primary. She was the first female candidate for president of PAN, and the first female candidate for president from a major political party in Mexico’s history. She ran not only as “different” from the other contenders but also different from her party, which had been in power for the previous twelve years. She was the least-known of the candidates from Mexico’s three main parties (PAN, PRI and PRD).

In 2006, she was named campaign coordinator for Felipe Calderón. She was not part of Calderón’s inner circle which caused some disputes during the campaign. When Calderón won, she was part of the transition team as the Coordinator of Political ties (Enlace Político). After the election, she was named Secretary of Public Education, the first woman in the job. Josefina had vied for the Secretaría de Gobernación position but she was offered to return to SEDESOL or to head the Secretariat of Public Education. She chose the latter as a new challenge. Her time there was marked by confrontations with the powerful head of the national teachers’ union, Elba Esther Gordillo. Some reports state that these confrontations caused problems with Calderon’s advisors with Calderon ready to remove her from the position, but this has not been confirmed. She won election to the Cámara de Diputados once again, this time becoming the Coordinator of the PAN Parliamentary Group. This gave her position to run for her party’s nomination for the 2012 presidential elections. She was in charge of PAN’s parliamentary group from 2009 to 2011.

Vázquez Mota began her political career with PAN with the Asociación Coordinadora Ciudadana and a member of the Secretaría de la Mujer. In 1996, she was asked to return to Mexico City to become a representative in Mexico’s federal legislature (Cámara de Diputados), because of her economics expertise. At this time, she met the then president of PAN, Felipe Calderón . She was elected to the 2000-2003 federal legislature (Cámara de Diputados), leading the sub-coordination of Economic Policy. She was then appointed as the first female secretary of Desarrollo Social (Social Development) known by its Spanish acronym of SEDESOL. While discrete, it was known that she did not get along with then First Lady Martha Sahagún . She remained in that position until 2006, when she resigned to work for the Calderón campaign.

Vázquez Mota met her husband, Sergio Ocampo Muñoz, a computer specialist, while in high school. The couple married in 1984 after seven years of courtship. The couple have three children: María José; Celia María; and Montserrat.

For a time in her career, she worked as a journalist on economic topics for Novedades de México, El Financiero and El Economista. In the 1980s, Josefina and her family moved to Chihuahua to attend some of the family businesses including a clothing store for children.

Josefina Eugenia Vázquez Mota (pronunciation (help·info) [xo̞.se̞'fi.na'βas.ke̞s'mo̞.ta]) (born 20 January 1961, in Mexico City) is a businessperson and politician who was the presidential candidate of the National Action Party (PAN) for the 2012 elections. Vázquez Mota was trained as an economist and began her working career in family businesses and with various business organizations and conferences, also working as a journalist and writing books. She began her political career with the  PAN organization, becoming involved in Mexico’s federal Chamber of Deputies of Mexico and then in the administrations of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón. She was PAN's first female candidate for president.

Vázquez Mota was born in Mexico City on 20 January 1961. Her parents, Arnulfo Vázquez and Josefina Mota, are from the Sierra Norte de Puebla region of Mexico, and she has seven brothers and sisters. She says she is closest to her sister Lupita. When they were children they use to sell chocolate shakes on the street with a blender Josefina received for Day of the Magi.