Gov. Tomas Joson III and his archrival, third-termer Rep. Pacifico Fajardo, will slug it out as standard bearers of the opposition and the administration, respectively.
Joson, provincial chairman of the Nationalist People’s Coalition-Bagong Lakas ng Nueva Ecija (NPC-Balane), will be seeking his third term as governor.
He won by a landslide in 1992 and was seeking re-election in 1995 when he and younger brother, Quezon Mayor Mariano Cristino, were detained two weeks before the elections for the April 22,1995 gunslaying of the late Cabanatuan mayor Honorato Perez Sr.
Fajardo, a second-degree cousin of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, is the provincial chairman of the Lakas-NUCD. He has the distinction of being the only Nueva Ecija congressman who completed three terms in the House.
He is a known "giant killer," having beaten in 1992 the then-seemingly invincible Hermogenes Concepcion Jr. in a contest nobody expected him to win. He also brought down other heavyweights in his district in succeeding polls, including Philip Ordoñez, son of former United Nations Ambassador Sedfrey Ordoñez.
Other members of the Joson and Fajardo clans also filed their candidacies in an attempt to tighten their grip in this landlocked province of 1.6 million people.
Joson’s eldest son, Edward Thomas, will run for Congress in the third district against Fajardo’s wife Leonora, Palayan City’s three-term mayor. The Fajardos’ eldest child, Lorelei, will run for mayor of Palayan against incumbent Vice Mayor Petronilo Garcia, whom the Josons have fielded.
Edward Thomas and Lorelei are both political neophytes although she handled the successful campaign of her father on his third term as congressman.
The other Josons seeking elective posts are Vice Gov. Eduardo IV, Mariano Cristino and his wife, first district Rep. Josie, Guimba Mayor Jose Lucius Dizon, the son-in-law of former governor Eduardo Nonato II, and former provincial jail warden Greg Manuel. All of them are re-electionists, except for Manuel who is running for the fourth district’s congressional seat.