18–year–old high school student elected as mayor

I heard this this morning on the way into work after being pushed over with a feather at the news that Kwame Kilpatrick has been re-elected as Detroit mayor.

Back in the late '60s, the then-very-little town of Sunol, California once elected a Labrador Retriever named Bo mayor. The town having declined all but terminally since its heyday in the '20s,'30s, and '40s, when it had been a rail junction and central to an area popular for use in the filming of "B" Westerns, there was little interest on the part of anyone re running for the at-the-time essentially un-essential office, and some thought was given to abolishing the post.

Bo's tavern-owning human, or perhaps some other tavern patron (the details are lost in the mists of time), one evening "nominated" him as a write-in candidate, a tongue-in-cheek, spur-of-the-moment lark, more or less. Naturally, as so often happens with such things, the idea took hold, with flyers and posters and buttons and all that.

The tavern became Bo's campaign headquarters, and regular "Campaign Rallies" were held on Wednesday evenings - in conjunction with the tavern's long-traditional open-pooltable and 10¢ tap beer night (this was a long time ago, remember). Bo's chief campaign tactic had been to wander about the town's tiny business district, greeting passers-by with tailwags and freindly sniffs, while soliciting edible campaign contributions. Other times, Bo could be found at his campaign headquarters, graciously accepting donations and headpats when not otherwise occupied, such as sleeping under the pooltable.

The effort and method paid off handsomely for Bo, who proved to be an able, popular politician. Elected in a landslide - something like 16-to-nothing (the town was tiny, remember) - he was re-elected twice, unopposed, and served honorably untill his death from old age early in his third term. His funeral was quite an affair.

The town, remote from the big cities and the paved wastelands of the sprawling, closer-in suburbs, but located quite conveniently to the freeway grid which inevitably ententacled the region, has grown hugely since those halcyon days, developing into one of those trendy "Bedroom Community" deals, replete with cutesy "Shoppes" and big, heavilly wooded building lots occupied by conspicuous-consumption-style mansionettes. As would be expected, Sunol has fallen back to resorting to mere humans as mayors. Taxes have gone up accordingly.

What an excellent story, timberlandko!

It would be interesting to see if the 18 year old could out-preform the dog! (This is, of course, keeping in mind that the citizens were happy enough with the dog to re-elect him several times.)

First thing he's going to do: make sure Taco Bell is open until 4am.