He moved on to gain a seat in Congress, then lost a bid for governor of Michoacan, his home state, in 1995. Meanwhile, he continued to progress within PAN's hierarchy, eventually becoming the party's national president and leading it to three gubernatorial wins and over a dozen mayoral victories. He also dipped briefly back into the private side to head up Banobras, a development bank. And Mexico's political landscape was changing.

In 2000, Vicente Fox ended a 71-year reign of one-party rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) with his election to Mexico's presidency. A fellow PAN member, Fox's candidacy was supported by Calderón. Two years later, Calderón was tapped to join Fox's cabinet as secretary of energy. It was a relatively short honeymoon however, as Calderón's open presidential aspirations caused him to resign the position in 2004. But he did not resign his ambitions.

Presidential Hopeful

When Calderón began to seek his party's nomination for the 2006 presidential election, he had neither the full support of the president or much name recognition. Unimposing and sedate, he was seen by many as the academic that he fundamentally was. He capitalized on this lack of innate charisma by campaigning on a platform of honesty in a country with a long history of corrupt public officials. Still, after securing the PAN nomination, he remained behind in the polls. A slight change in tactics and more vigorous methods changed all that.

Calderón's prime adversary in the campaign was the leftist former mayor of Mexico City, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. While Obrador's populist leanings endeared him to the poor, Calderón's free-market vision made him a favorite of the wealthy. And both candidates purported to make jobs a top priority. So, perhaps recognizing that his natural constituency was unlikely to alter, Calderón started to actively add the support of the middle classes. One way in which he did this was through ads attacking Obrador. While some considered the means offensive, they were effective. Calderón and Obrador, who had gotten his own digs in by then, were neck and neck by the spring of 2006.

The elections were held on July 2, 2006. Once considered the favorite by a wide margin, Obrador's victory was no longer a certainty. After the votes were counted and announced on July 6, it was apparent that Calderón's views had made an impact. For his part, the fortunate son of his father's party succintly stated his reason for running to James C. McKinley of the New York Times, as quoted in the Latin America News: "I don't want Mexico to go backward."

The supreme Mexican electoral court dismissed Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's claims of fraud in the election, and the decision effectively confirmed Calderon as the winner of the election, although the court had not yet formally declared him president-elect. In September, however, Mexico's supreme electoral court unanimously voted to declare Calderon the official winner of the July 2 election.

On January 9, 2007 Calderon launched a new universal health insurance plan which will cover all children born during his time in office.

August 7, 2008: Calderon proposed that kidnappers be sentenced to life without parole for kidnapping children, for especially violent kidnappings, or for kidnappings that resulted in the death of the victim.