Former Sonoran Gov. Guillermo Padres Released From Jail

By Murphy Woodhouse
Published: Monday, February 4, 2019 - 6:11pm
Updated: Monday, February 4, 2019 - 6:50pm

Former Sonoran Gov. Guillermo Padres will now fight criminal charges outside of a jail cell.

The ex-member of the conservative PAN party was released over the weekend after family members mortgaged properties to cover his bail. Facing money laundering and organized crime charges, Padres turned himself in in November 2016 and had been held in Mexico City until his release Saturday.

“Finally, the law has been followed,” said Sonoran PAN head Ernesto Munro. He and other Padres supporters have long argued that pretrial detention was inappropriate in the case, and applauded his release.

The news was not welcomed by current Sonoran Gov. Claudia Pavlovich, a member of the PRI party who succeeded Padres in 2015.

On Twitter she wrote that she is against those who “betray the trust of the Sonoran people.”

Hermosillo Mayor Celida Lopez, on the other hand, tweeted her support for Padres’ family and said that his mistakes “are not mine, but he won’t stop being my friend because of them.”

Lopez is a member of the left-leaning Morena party, but was previously a member of Padres’ PAN party. Other Morena members criticized her conciliatory message.

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