CAT-IDATES FOR
PUBLIC OFFICE

Everyone seems to agree that the world of politics is going to the dogs. One irrefutable sign: the number of cats who have been candidates for public office in recent years.

Cat-idate: Tuxedo Stan, a black-and-white cat whose markings made him look like he was wearing a tuxedo

Running For: Mayor of Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia

Campaign Notes: Stan, a feral kitten, was adopted by a veterinarian named Hugh Chisholm and his wife Kathy in 2010. Halifax has a large population of feral cats, thanks in part to the fact that local laws require the spaying or neutering of dogs…but not cats. In 2012 the Chisholms decided to call attention to the problem by entering Stan as a candidate for mayor on the Tuxedo Party ticket. All proceeds generated from the sale of campaign merchandise (lawn signs, T-shirts, campaign buttons, etc.) went to help low-income families spay or neuter their cats.

Stan never quite made it onto the ballot. (Municipal law requires that candidates for public office have birth certificates.) Not that a little thing like that slowed his popularity: his campaign was endorsed by both Ellen DeGeneres and Anderson Cooper, and he attracted 17,000 followers on Facebook. After the election, the Halifax city council awarded a $40,000 grant in his name to the Halifax SPCA to fund a low-cost spay and neuter clinic for cats. “Stan was a true politician,” Dr. Chisholm told Canada’s National Post newspaper in 2013. “He lived up to his promises.”

Stan never quite made it onto the ballot. (Municipal law requires that candidates for public office have birth certificates.)

Cat-idate: Hank, a 10-year-old Maine coon cat owned by two Virginians, Matthew O’Leary and Anthony Roberts

Running For: State senate and, later, the U.S. Senate

Campaign Notes: O’Leary hated the way lawn signs clutter up the landscape during campaign season, and that gave him and Roberts the idea to have Hank run for a seat in the state senate. At least those lawn signs (and T-shirts and bumper stickers) would be fun to look at, they figured. On election day, they were shocked to see that Hank had actually received nine write-in votes—enough to encourage O’Leary and Roberts to enter Hank in the 2012 race for the U.S. Senate. “As a typical politician, what do you do when you fail? You run for the next highest seat,” O’Leary explains. Hank’s opponents: Former governor (and future vice presidential candidate) Tim Kaine, a Democrat; and former senator George Allen, a Republican. Hank ran as an independent.

…Reason: People ate lots more vegetables, because they weren’t rationed.

On election day, Tim Kaine beat Allen by more than 224,000 votes. More than 7,000 write-in votes were cast in the race, and although Virginia does not release tallies for the various names that were written in, O’Leary and Roberts believe, without evidence, that the lion’s share of the votes probably went to Hank. If true, that would have made him the third-place finisher. Even better, Hank managed to raise more than $60,000 in campaign contributions, which O’Leary and Roberts donated to animal rescue organizations.

Cat-idate: Limberbutt McCubbins, a 30-pound tabby cat living in Louisville, Kentucky

Running For: President of the United States

Campaign Notes: The U.S. Constitution requires that to be sworn in as president, a candidate must have been born in the United States and be at least 35 years of age. But it doesn’t say anything about who can run for the office. That’s what two duPont Manual High School students, Isaac Weiss and Andrew Valentine, learned in 2015 when they tried to file a “statement of candidacy” with the Federal Elections Commission for their friend Emilee McCubbins’s cat, Limberbutt. The FEC had to accept their paperwork because there is no rule prohibiting filing on behalf of a cat. (Limberbutt McCubbins was one of 459 candidates for president in 2016—no word on how many others were cats.) Limberbutt, a “Demo-cat,” ran on a platform of better veterinary care for animals—the “Affordable Cat Act”—and including cats on any future trips to the moon. His campaign slogan: “Meow Is the Time.”

Limberbutt’s name never made it onto the ballot. The hurdles for that are much higher than merely filing papers with the FEC. The fat cat lost to Donald Trump in a landslide, but Emilee McCubbins is philosophical about her candidate’s defeat. “We certainly identify with Trump’s campaign, if not his beliefs,” she told NBC’s Today Show. “A large part of the American public views us as a joke, and yet, we remain surprisingly serious.”

To see more odd candidates who filed statements of candidacy with the FEC to run as candidates for president, turn to page 415.

A plant-eating insect called the issus is born with interlocking gears on its body.