War of the Roses...All's Fair Don't You Know

Every now and then, I find a new reason to wake up in the morning. This past week has giving me five. Each day has been like a Mexican soap opera unfolding before our eyes, as the local race for District 39 State Representative was about to start to boil. According to the January 4th edition of The Monitor, incumbent Armando "Mando" Martinez was slated to go head to head against his estranged wife, Jessica Reyes-Martinez, 29 and 28 respectively. Each candidate has their own version of why the divorce is taking place, and each stand by their convictions and reasons for running for office. Personally, and a lot of people agreed with me locally, including my friend Enrico Sebastian fresh from his weekly massage. "It's getting to the point where we're letting just any Tom, Dick or Jane to run for office nowadays. Fill out a piece of paper, pay your fees, and make sure you keep your nose clean for the next ninety days or so, until the primaries". I agreed, but I also know a hum-dinger of a race shaping up when I see one. This race got me out of my funk, ladies and gentlemen. Yes sir, a clean slate. So I messed up my New Years resolutions so quickly out of the gate, we're into a different race now. A heated battle that only teenagers can describe as the type of tension so thick you can cut with the plastic knife they hand out in the high school cafeteria. That uneasy sense that something exciting and terribly wrong is going to happen at any given second, when an ex-girlfriend is about to let her ex-beau know exactly what she thought about 'busting' him making out with her best friend. The kind of stuff that gets chopped up and hacked in the rumor mill for months. As an adult, you never lose that kind guilty need to see some action, guess why there's celebrity tabloids and professional boxing. We didn't love Mike Tyson because he looked like a prancing ballerina, sparring toe to toe with his opponent. No, we loved Mike Tyson because the man could kick some ass. Period. And such was the type of excitement I was setting myself up for every time I opened the morning paper for the next three months. That is until yesterday, Friday, when I read that the Democratic Chairman Juan Maldonado had disqualified Reyes-Martinez' bid against her husband. According to The Monitor, Maldonado cited an incomplete application in regards to Reyes- Martinez not stating a specific address. Well, well, well. It's good to be an incumbent isn't it. It let's you retain friends in high places, forget the low, only the loser crowd hangs out there, regardless of what Garth Brooks tells us, and those types of friends don't get you double servings of dessert in the cafeteria. No, in this life you need those friends in high places to make sure they got your back whenever an ex-anything tries to get in the way of your goals. Make no mistake about it, folks, this move was political, and personal. By both sides. There is no doubt, in my mind or Enrico's, that Jessica Reyes-Martinez decided to run against her ex-husband to spite him. But so what? There are a million different reasons to run for office, and each of the incumbents have had to answer their own, and sadly, not all those reasons are ethically sound. But I delve into an area that's too dark for some people to fathom, and only those with a unique sense of 'action' can appreciate the type of melee the District 39 race was shaping up to be. Hell, even those snotty high school cheerleaders got a kick out of this type of action every once and a while. But come on, we're only human after all, don't you know.