A French Bulldog named Wilbur Beast, has been elected as mayor of Rabbit Hush, a small town in Kentucky, United States.
Wilbur Beast won a landslide victory in the town’s mayoral election of Rabbit Hash with about 13,143 votes on Thursday, the highest winning total recorded in the history of the town.
The 6-month-old puppy unseated incumbent Brynneth Paltrow, a rescued pit bull mix after winning the canine election.
According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, there were 22,985 votes cast, the highest ever for the town.
Amy Noland, Wilbur’s owner, told NBC News that Wilbur’s campaign was;
Based around all of the negative media that’s out there surrounding America, and the election, and Covid-19. I guess I wanted Wilbur to be something positive in the news.
She mentioned that Wilbur is dealing with the stress of being the mayor quite well, stating;
He’s done a lot of interviews locally. He’s had a lot of pets, a lot of belly scratches and a lot of ear rubs.
Noland explained that the town ‘has never had an actual person or human as mayor,’ but the tradition of electing canine came about in the late 1990s.
She narrated;
There was a man named Don Claire who thought it would be a great idea to elect some type of animal — not necessarily a canine — as mayor of town.
Noland said she fosters kittens and cats, and the rest of the town is a thriving community of dog lovers.
She further revealed;
There have been five dog mayors of Rabbit Hash since the first, Goofy. The last mayor, a pit bull named Brynn, was mayor from 2016 to 2020.
The town holds a dog election every three years, which always coincides with US presidential election but Noland declared that ‘it’s not political at all’.
