Something for the weekend: Edgewater, a neighbourhood in Chicago, is currently running a competition to recruit an animal mayor, who will represent the wellbeing needs of the ever-growing local pet population in a specially created new role. The hopeful candidates include dogs Ballew, Bug, Wrigley, and Winston (pictured), a cat named Titus, and a goat, Pax.
While this campaign, which includes a $1 voting fee, is to raise money and awareness for local causes, it follows in the pawprints of an ongoing trend in local US politics. Towns across five US states have swapped the policies of their human peers, to instead put man’s best friend in receipt of all the perks of public office.
One particularly successful paw-litician is Bosco, a black Labrador-rottweiler who has beaten two humans so far to serve in Sunol, California for 13 years.
A cat names Stubbs, meanwhile, boasted a 20-year tenure in Talkeetna, Alaska, before starting to step back from public life in 2015. During his time in the job, Stubbs enjoyed drinking water mixed with catnip from a wineglass, provided as a workplace perk in his office in the town’s general store.
Gus Hall, the canine mayor of Coronado, California, on the other hand, earned more than half of the 20,000 votes cast to win his election in 2018.
Here at Employee Benefits, we believe every employee, human or otherwise, deserves the chance to apply for their dream job. We wonder if a bribe of walkies could earn us the deputy mayor post….