Dog files as candidate for mayor, is turned down, but not necessarily because he's a dog

Will Lerner
·Producer, Yahoo Entertainment

Irving, Texas man Mike Howard has a good question: “Who doesn’t like a nice, pretty, cute dog?” It’s that line of thinking and a frustration with theinaction of his local government that led Mr. Howard to file his dog, Dylan Westie, as a candidate for mayor, as KTVT CBS Dallas/Fort Worth reports.

Dylan, who certainly qualifies as nice, pretty, and cute, seems like he’d be an effective leader. On Mr. Howard’s website, The Controversial Committee Report, he wrote that Dylan pledges to not, “conduct illegal meetings or city business behind closed doors,” travel abroad on “someone else’s dime,” or “or stymie ideas of others because it was not [his] idea in the first place.”

It doesn’t appear that Dylan is above political gamesmanship, however. The day his papers were filed with Irving was the same day the town’s current leader, Mayor Beth Van Duyne, kicked off her re-election with a party, as The Dallas Morning News points out. When asked about that party, Mr. Howard told the paper, “I know Dylan didn’t get an invitation. If that precipitated his wanting to file, so be it.”

However, Dylan’s political aspirations took a big hit. Dallas Observer reports that, “To run for mayor, a candidate needs at least 60 petition signatures; Dylan had just 13. The candidate also needs to be a registered voter; Dylan is not. The candidate's signature needs to be notarized; Dylan's was not.” Another issue that Irving City Secretary Shanae Jennings pointed out to the blog was that a, “dog's signature cannot be notarized, because a dog cannot sign something.”

Dylan’s owner, Mike Howard isn’t a man who thinks his dog could actually be mayor. He’s just a man who went through the machinations of filing paperwork to have his dog be a candidate for mayor. There’s a difference. As KTVT notes, Howard has been writing political satire for three decades now, so this falls in line with his body of work.

What’s next for Dylan? Well, he tweeted this yesterday…

More info: KTVT, Dallas Morning News , Dallas Observer