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that it was time for them to get married. For whatever reason, Renee continued to stall. 
    Renee became interested in county politics and was very involved in helping the local county Republican Party however she could, over time working her way up to county vice-chair of the party. Politics had never interested Mitch, and he had a hard time understanding her fascination with it. He still blamed politics for what happened to their relationship. He never knew the particulars, but what he did know was that one night he received a call from Renee asking him to meet with her. The next thing he knew, she was apologizing for not being able to marry him and handing him back the engagement ring she had worn for several years. She told him she hoped they'd be able to remain friends.
    The next few months were the worst of Mitch's life. Not only had Renee broken up with him, but he soon learned that she was going to marry a man who was very involved in county politics by the name of Bob Salazar. Almost a year later family members insisted he seek professional help for treatment of his depression. The psychiatrist he’d been seeing in San Francisco recommended that he check himself into a mental hospital for treatment of his acute depression, which he did. The only non-family visitor during that time was Renee’s father. They had become very close over the years, probably because of their very strong conservative views.
    As the months went by his attitude towards Renee began to change, and he began to hate her for what she had done to him - very simply breaking his heart. There were times when he honestly didn't know how he could get out of bed and face the day. There were other times when he was so angry at what had happened he thought he'd like to see her dead, but he knew he could never do anything to hurt Renee. The fact was, in spite of his newly professed hatred of her, he still loved her.
    While he didn't like politics, and stayed as far away from it as he could, he was following the election contest between Bob Salazar and Reverend Jacobs with a great deal of interest. He’d even given Reverend Jacobs a large political contribution, financially footing an expensive mailer that gave all the reasons why Reverend Jacobs would make a very good county supervisor and why Bob Salazar would make a very bad one. Mitch had a number of employees on his ranch who were Mexican and even though the reverend's inner circle had asked Mitch to make a big deal of Bob being Mexican, he stopped short of doing that, because he was afraid it would create problems between him and the workers on his ranch.
    Mitch assumed that the mailer he’d underwritten was the reason why Bob had dropped out of the race a few days after it was delivered to voters in the county. He felt good that he'd had a part in defeating Salazar. The morning after the election he poured himself a cup of coffee and opened the paper to see what the reverend's final vote count was, so he could call him and congratulate him on his win. It wasn't to be.
    The large headline jumped out at him: “Salazar Wins County Supervisor's Seat by a Landslide.” Mitch had to read it three times before he fully comprehended what it meant. He took a sip of his coffee and sat back wondering what had happened that would cause this bizarre election result. After all, Bob Salazar had publicly dropped out of the race and by all rights should not have won the election, but he had. The newspaper recounted a number of theories, but no one could actually explain why it had happened. That was between each individual voter and their ballot and neither one of them was talking.
    He spent the next few weeks deeply depressed. Even the pills couldn’t pull him out of it. Everyone knew Renee had left him for Bob Salazar and then to have Bob win the county supervisor's seat after he'd dropped out of the election was almost too much for Mitch to bear. He became consumed with how he could get back at Renee and Bob