Joe says Ed Calderon told him that essentially every candidate for mayor or any government seat in Mexico works with a cartel, so candidates who get assassinated are rival cartel members.

The finding

What the evidence shows

Cartels really do shape many local Mexican elections, and experts say some murdered candidates were tied to a gang that was losing out locally. But reporting on the wave of candidate killings shows a mixed picture. Some victims were killed for standing up to organized crime, like congressional candidate Fernando Purón, who had taken a strong anti-crime stance. Experts also describe the problem as hitting certain regions, not the whole country, so saying every candidate works with a cartel and every killing is cartel-on-cartel goes well beyond the evidence. This verdict would flip if a systematic study found that nearly all Mexican candidates, including those killed, had confirmed cartel ties.