Jack of Harts

The new President of the United States considered the Texas refusal to extradite previous President (Impeached) Lopez’s staffers to Washington for justice a direct challenge to his authority. And he did have the cojones to order the FBI to “Come and take them” as Texas had challenged. The FBI started at the top, with Lopez’s former Chief of Staff. Now the incoming Attorney General of Texas after winning the election in a landslide, the Texas Rangers guarded his every movement when the FBI agents came for him. The gunfight in downtown Dallas resulted in three wounded Rangers, five wounded FBI agents, and a mixed posse of Rangers, Sheriffs, and Policemen surrounding the FBI agents to demand their surrender.

The Lopez and Freemon campaign carried the day in over thirty States on that last Election Day. They helped bring a new class of freshman Senators and Representatives to Washington that would do their best to hold the line against the President who Impeached and replaced them. They regained control of the Senate, but opposition candidates scored great successes in more populous States, and they strengthened their control of the House of Representatives. The Lame Duck Senate spent the rest of their time in the majority rubberstamping as many Presidential initiatives as they had time to vote on, securing their vision to fundamentally transform America. Though the transformation they achieved was not the transformation they planned, since Lopez and Freemon returned to their homes as the best kind of heroes. The kind who fought a good battle, were defeated by a more ruthless enemy, but continued to fight on. Lopez found a powerful position he had not campaigned for awaiting him in Texas, and in Freemon’s Blue Ridge Mountain home of Lexington a new brand of fundamental transformation for the Commonwealth of Virginia was already growing.

The deadlines for declaring candidacy had passed before Lopez and Freemon were Impeached, and no one in their party had run any credible campaign to replace them. There was therefore no one to turn to when the federal Congress declared they were ineligible to run for re-election. So their party simply declined to do as told. They kept Lopez and Freemon as the leaders of the party, campaigning for other candidates all over America. There were no debates, and the federal Congress directed that Lopez and Freemon be removed from the ballots before Election Day. Some States followed that guidance. Others did not, most saying that they did not have time to reprint the ballots. Texas’ refusal was more direct and far more colorful. The party asked the people to vote for Lopez and Freemon on every ballot that had them, and to write them in if it did not. The campaign garnered a clear popular majority in thirty States. The other State election commissions rejected any ballot with their names on it and five States actually shredded or deleted them, in accordance with the new federal election laws that authorized the destruction of vandalized ballots. The States that declared the incumbent President winner were enough to provide him a clear electoral and popular vote victory, and he was quick to accept their mandate to preside over all of the United States.