THE wood-panelled walls of Rodrigo Moya Torres’s study are decorated with hunting knives. On his desk lies a pistol; underneath is a rifle. Mr Moya, who wears a black Stetson and monogrammed cowboy boots, grew up on a ranch. But he has spent the past 31 years publishing a weekly newspaper in the town of Ecatepec, just north of Mexico City.

The firearms are for self-defence. The opinion pages of his newspaper, Morelos de Ecatepec, fulminate against corruption at all levels of government. Mr Moya has received death threats; a local politician tried to kidnap him, he says. No politician merits his respect. “They treat people badly and they don’t look after them,” he fumes.

Ecatepec is a violent part of the State of Mexico, which encircles the country’s capital city almost fully and provides a home to many people who work there. Many of its inhabitants seem to share Mr Moya’s contempt for politicians, which suggests that turnout in a gubernatorial election on June 4th is likely to be low. Despite their indifference, the outcome could affect the direction not just of the state but of the country.

The contest pits the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, against Morena, the political vehicle of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a left-wing populist who hopes to become Mexico’s president next year. A loss would be traumatic for the PRI, which has governed the state for 88 years, and embarrassing for Mr Peña, who has his political base in the state (he cannot run for re-election). Victory for Morena’s candidate, Delfina Gómez Álvarez, would confirm Mr López Obrador as the favourite to win in 2018. He is a fierce critic of corruption, and of reforms introduced by Mr Peña to modernise the economy and Mexican schools. As president, Mr López Obrador, or AMLO, as he is known, would seek to clean Mexico up and drag it backwards.

The PRI’s prestige is at stake in two smaller states it governs, Nayarit in the west and Coahuila in the north, which will hold elections on the same day (the eastern state of Veracruz will have municipal elections). But it is the result in the State of Mexico that really matters. With 16m inhabitants, it is the country’s most populous state; its GDP is the largest after Mexico City’s. Mr Peña was born in the state and governed it from 2005 to 2011. It is “the last bastion of the PRI”, says Sergio Miranda, a historian at UNAM, a university in Mexico City. The current governor, Eruviel Ávila, won 62% of the vote in 2011.

The PRI’s dominance has a feudal quality. Mr Peña is distantly related to six earlier governors. Alfredo del Mazo Maza, the PRI’s candidate to succeed Mr Ávila, is an even better example of political inbreeding. His father and grandfather were governors. The state is said to be home to the Atlacomulco group, a clique of PRI politicians so shadowy that some doubt its existence.

Voters may be losing faith in dynasts and cabals. Crime is their biggest worry, says Fernando Moreno, who operates a one-man citizens’ advice bureau in Ecatepec, the municipality with Mexico’s fifth-highest number of murders. The state is not a hub of organised crime, but a “woman out getting milk in the morning will be robbed for the sake of 20 pesos” (about $1), he says. On May 30th five policemen were killed by unknown gunmen in an ambush.

The national statistics office says the State of Mexico is the country’s most corrupt, as measured by the number of corrupt acts per 100,000 people. The rate of off-the-books “informal” employment is higher than the Mexican average; the poverty rate rose from 42.9% in 2010 to 49.6% in 2014, the second-biggest increase among the 32 states. Under Mr Ávila’s governorship there has been no improvement in the quality of life, says Eduardo Garduño of the state’s Autonomous University.

AMLO aims high

These grievances are regional echoes of national ones. Mr Peña is just as unpopular in his home state as elsewhere. People blame him for failing to reduce corruption, impunity and insecurity. They hate his government’s decision to increase petrol prices sharply this year. Despite all this, Mr del Mazo is slightly ahead in some polls, but his lead, if it exists, is tiny and insecure.

If he loses, it will probably be to Ms Gómez, a former teacher and congresswoman. She is trying to become the first governor from Morena, the party Mr López Obrador created after he split in 2012 from the leftist (but more establishment-minded) Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Governors can be a big help to presidential candidates, by rallying voters and, if they are unscrupulous, by diverting money from the state to their parties. Morena has spent a lot of its own money to win in the State of Mexico. If it does, that would create “the image that Mr López Obrador is unbeatable” in next year’s presidential election, says Jesús Silva-Herzog, a political scientist at Tecnológico de Monterrey, a university.

The main challenger to Mr López Obrador next year may be the candidate of the centre-right National Action Party (PAN) rather than the PRI’s nominee (both have yet to be named). The PAN has a strong chance of unseating the PRI in Nayarit, where it is in alliance with the PRD, and in Coahuila. It could even win in the State of Mexico (though it trails behind the PRD, which is now in third place in the polls).

The PRI, by contrast, has all but given up on trying to win next year’s presidential election, suggests Alejandro Schtulmann of EMPRA, a political-risk consulting firm. A victory in the State of Mexico would not resurrect its prospects. Even so, it will remain a force to be reckoned with. In 2015 it had 5m members, many more than any other party. If it loses all three gubernatorial elections on June 4th, it will still run 12 of the 32 states.

Pundits predicted the PRI’s demise after it lost a presidential election in 2000 for the first time in 71 years; Mr Peña brought it back to power 12 years later. It retains a voto duro, a hard core of supporters, many from trade unions. That can give the party victory in elections when turnout is low. A loss by the PRI in the State of Mexico would wound the party but not destroy it. The bigger consequence would be the election of Mr López Obrador as president next year. That would leave a lasting mark on the country.