Viceroys

Here's a pair of analysts looking at the importance of governors to the recent election, starting with Leo Zuckermann:

On electoral issues, "as natural leaders of their parties, [governors] intervene to kick start their respective electoral machines in their states. An effective governor in the electoral arena gets up to his elbows in internal aspects of his party: he supports the like-minded so that they become candidates, he names and moves party officials, he hands out public money to party clients and takes care of mobilizing the tough voters on election day." Six years later, I reaffirm those words.

Zuckermann then goes on to name which governors had the best results in carrying out that task (though unfortunately he didn't consider Ebrard), determining that the star among the governors was Enrique Peña. He also named ten other PRI governors as well as two panistas who also delivered. The big losers in his estimation were the PAN's Marco Adame of Morelos and the PRD's Zeferino Torreblanca of Guerrero.

Like Zuckermann, Salvador García Soto uses the word "viceroys" to refer to the governors, and agrees that as a group, they were the vital electoral players:

The factor that defined the national vote to renew the Chamber of Deputies and that marked the devastating defeats for the PAN and the PRD, together with the return of the PRI, were the priísta governors, who made a huge difference and contributed, state by state with their local machinery, to putting together the overwhelming triumph of the PRI and accentuating the debacle for the PAN and the PRD.

He also mentions Peña Nieto for his successes in Mexico, as well as Eugenio Hernández in Tamaulipas and Ulises Ruiz in Oaxaca. For the PRD, García Soto talks up Amalia García (Zacatecas), Narciso Agúndez (Baja California Sur), and Ebrard as having performed well. As a group, the PAN governors were singled out for their poor performance.