Delfina Gómez Álvarez (born 15 November 1962) is a Mexican politician affiliated with the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) who has served as the Governor of the State of Mexico since 2023. She previously served as the head of the Secretariat of Public Education appointed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. She served as a senator from the State of Mexico in the LXIV Legislature of the Mexican Congress. She also has served as a federal deputy and mayor.^[2]

Gómez was elected as the State of Mexico's next governor after winning the 2023 Mexican gubernatorial elections. She is the first woman and the first non-member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to lead the state.^[3][4]

Gómez was born in Texcoco and began her adult life as a teacher in the State of Mexico education system. In 1986, she earned her degree in Primary Education from the National Pedagogic University, which she paid for by caring for another family's three children;^[5] this was followed by master's degrees in pedagogy (in 1994) and in education (in 2001, from Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education); additionally, she was active in the SMSEM union for state teachers. She directed the private Columbia School between 1991 and 1996. In 1998, she was named assistant deputy director of projects in the state Secretariat of Education; four years later, she became a school director,^[2] facing off against one of her colleagues to see who would be named director of the Nezahualcóyotl public school in the center of Texcoco, winning more than half of the 36 votes cast.^[5]

In 2012, Gómez left education and entered politics. On the advice of Higinio Martínez Miranda, a former mayor of Texcoco and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD)'s gubernatorial candidate in 1999,^[5] she ran for the municipal presidency of Texcoco as the joint candidate of Movimiento Ciudadano and the Labor Party, though she was not a member of either party.^[6] After winning the election, she served as the mayor of Texcoco from 2013 until February 2015, when she stepped down in order to begin a successful run as Morena's candidate for federal deputy from the 38th electoral district of the State of Mexico, which includes Texcoco. She sat on four commissions with one secretarial post, on the Commission for Strengthening Federalism.^[2]

In January 2022, the Electoral Court of the Federal Judiciary determined there was a "parallel financing scheme" for supporting the creation and activities of the political party National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) during the administration of Gómez Álvarez.^[15] Workers of the Texcoco Municipality and the National System for Integral Family Development (DIF) received 90% of their salary. The party was fined with 4,529,224 pesos.^[16]

Initially, Gómez denied the scheme and requested during the first debate for 2017 the state governorship that evidence be presented before the authorities. Subsequently, Gómez explained, "I find the administration with a debt of close to 200 million pesos [...] as an act of coherence and to join this effort of the citizens to pay this debt, this salary deduction is made. [...] A group [from] the political organization [MORENA] established that a donation or a contribution will be given to that group, as it is also done to other parties. The workers/followers/militants determined it and the only thing I do as president is to approve it. There were around 150 [to] 180 workers [who signed the approval document]".^[17] During the first debate for the 2023 gubernatorial candidacy of the state, Gómez distanced herself from the scheme, saying that only the party was sanctioned.^[18]