Mexico searches for 7 missing in boating accident (AP)

TIJUANA, Mexico – Mexican rescuers scoured the Gulf of California for seven missing U.S. tourists whose boat capsized two days ago, saying they were extending the search because the castaways could still be alive in the warm, calm waters.

One American has been confirmed dead in the accident, which came after a flash storm upended the boat before dawn Sunday, spilling dozens of tourists and crew members into the water. The identity of the dead man was not released.

By early Monday, 19 of the tourists and all 16 crew members had been picked up by the navy or other fishing boats after clinging to coolers, rescue rings and life vests for more than 16 hours.

Mexican Navy, army and state officials met late Monday to discuss the search and there were reports they would call off rescue efforts. But instead they announced the search would continue over an extended area.

Mexican navy Capt. Benjamin Pineda Gomez said that with the warm weather and water temperature in the Gulf of California, it's still possible that the missing tourists are alive.

"A person who casts away can survive many days. That sea is calm," he said.

The U.S. Coast Guard offered Mexico help in the search and rescue operation and said it will continue its operations.

The 115-foot (35-meter) vessel, the Erik, sank about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of the port of San Felipe around 2:30 a.m. PDT (5:30 a.m. EDT; 0930 GMT) Sunday, the second day of a weeklong vacation fishing trip the group had organized for several years each Independence Day holiday.

The boat capsized less than two miles (three kilometers) from shore, but the navy extended its search 60 miles (100 kilometers) deeper into the gulf later Monday after searching the area by helicopter and airplane and finding nothing, Pineda said.

Most of the 27 men on the fishing excursion are from Northern California and had made the trip before.

"I'm beyond concerned," said Kristina Bronstein, who is engaged to missing tourist Mark Dorland of Twain Harte, California.

She heard about the accident Monday morning from a trip organizer's wife, who told her Dorland, 62, was one of the first people to fall into the water. He wasn't wearing a life vest.

The couple are to be married next month.

Charles Gibson, a police officer with the Contra Costa Community College District, said people on the boat were awoken by other passengers and the crew as it began to sink.

Most "were in the water for over 16 hours," said Gibson, who had gone on the fishing trip twice before. "We hope that the information is getting to our families that we are here and that we survived."

Another survivor, Lee Ikegami, called his wife in San Martin, California, and told her he survived by clambering into a life raft when the boat overturned.

"There was an angel sitting on his shoulder," his wife, Murphy Ikegami, said.

Murphy Ikegami said the fishermen made the trip every year but would only make day trips out tosea to fish and stayed in hotels along the coast at night. This year, she said, they decided they wanted to sleep on the boat.

Those rescued were in good condition with a few scrapes after bobbing in the intense sun and Gulf waters that were about 77 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degres Celsius), according to the Mexican navy weather analysis. Photos released by the Mexican navy showed several sunburned fishermen in T-shirts and Bermuda shorts waiting to get on a bus.

The Erik has been on the Gulf of California, known in Mexico as the Sea of Cortez, since 1989, according to the website of the company Baja Sportfishing Inc. It was built in Holland and was equipped with stabilizers to handle the turbulent North Sea.

The California Secretary of State website says Baja Sportfishing's business license has been suspended. It doesn't state a reason or give a date.

"We have been working with Mexican Navy authorities and the U.S. Coast Guard in the search and rescue," Baja Sportfishing Inc. said in a brief statement e-mailed to The Associated Press. "Right now our main concern is making sure that everyone is accounted for."

The company didn't respond to an interview request. It said in an announcement posted on its website Monday afternoon that all trips have been canceled.

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Associated Press writers Olga R. Rodriguez in Mexico City, Paul Elias in San Francisco, California, and Phuong Le in Seattle contributed to this report.

Mexico voters choose governor, give hints for 2012 (AP)

ECATEPEC, Mexico – There's more at stake than picking a governor as voters go to the polls Sunday in the state of Mexico, with 15 million people the country's most populous state and a bellwether for next year's presidential election.

Eruviel Avila heads into the closely watched vote with a 30-percentage point lead for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which has never lost the governorship in more than 80 years. But the PRI needs a commanding victory to create momentum going into the July 2012 national election, where it wants to regain the presidency it lost in 2000 after 71 years of uninterrupted rule.

The front-runner in presidential polls, Enrique Pena Nieto, is the current PRI governor of Mexico state, home to the sprawling, impoverished suburbs that ring Mexico City.

The other two major parties, trailing in the polls and lacking the coalitions that have beat the PRI in other states, are warning voters that backing the PRI is backing a return to the past, when the "dinosaurs" wielded power through coercion, corruption and intimidation.

Avila faces Alejandro Encinas, 57, from the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, which won the presidential vote in the state of Mexico in 2006 despite PRI domination of state and local offices. Trailing third is Luis Felipe Bravo Mena, 58, of Calderon's conservative National Action Party, or PAN, which won the presidential vote there in 2000.

The PAN and PRD tried early on to form a coalition to defeat the PRI, as they did last year to win the PRI stronghold states of Oaxaca, Puebla and Sinaloa. But the agreement fell apart in Mexico state, and other coalition efforts never got off the ground in two other states, Nayarit and Coahuila, where the PRI is expected to win governorships on Sunday.

Across Mexico, many voters are weary of the PAN, which after more than a decade in power has failed to make fundamental changes in Mexico apart from a trademark war on organized crime that has seen a spike in violence. Since President Felipe Calderon took office in late 2006, more than 35,000 people have died in drug violence according to the government. Other sources put the number at more than 40,000.

And internal fighting in the PRD has left the leftist party in disarray.

The PRI has sprung back in the vacuum.

After mounting one of the most expensive campaigns in Mexico's history, Avila ran tirelessly as a "democrat," polling near 60 percent while Encinas' support hover sin the mid-to-high 20s in surveys by the newspapers Reforma and El Universal. Those polls have a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The newspaper Reforma reported last month that Avila's campaign spent nearly 4.4 million pesos a day ($376,000), more than the 3.4 million pesos ($290,000) Calderon spent to win the presidency. The campaign didn't respond to questions about spending from the AP.

Even as the opposing parties cry foul and have filed complaints with the national elections tribunal over alleged PRI campaign violations, the elections Sunday and next year appear the PRI's to lose.