NEW YORK— Three years ago, conservative Mexican politician Ricardo Anaya was running for president, aspiring to spend the next six years issuing orders from the sumptuous presidential residence in Mexico City.
Instead, he found himself recently standing on a crowded New York City street, waiting for an Amazon van to deliver a mattress to a tiny, unfurnished utility apartment with two windows looking out on a brick wall. He wore dark glasses, a surgical mask and a blue baseball cap.
Having placed second in the 2018 election to current Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mr. Anaya recently fled Mexico to escape what he says is a political vendetta by the leftist leader after a bruising presidential campaign.
“López Obrador is authoritarian, he is vengeful, and he wants to destroy me,” Mr. Anaya said in his first interview since leaving Mexico in July to a previously unknown location in the U.S.
The 42-year-old former congressman, whose wire-rim glasses give him the look of an intense accountant, faces charges in Mexico of racketeering, bribery and money laundering, linked to an alleged 2014 bribe, that could land him in prison for 30 years. If convicted, he would be ineligible to run for president again.
Many legal experts, political analysts and human-rights observers say the government’s case against Mr. Anaya is weak and part of a broader offensive by the president to use corruption charges against those who stand in the way of his agenda, including rival politicians, business leaders and scientists. They see the prosecution as a test of Mexico’s judiciary, which has grown increasingly independent over the past two decades as the country became a fledgling democracy.