Stubbs for U.S. Senate? Thanks to the Internet, This is a Thing

The campaign for U.S. Senate in Alaska has received national attention, and the race has been rife with campaign ads.  Tuesday morning, one more candidate threw his hat into the ring, and his campaign ad has social media purring.  KTNA’s Phillip Manning has more.

According to Real Clear Politics, Congress currently has an approval rating below 13%.  While Talkeetna has no official mayor, and thus no approval polls, odds are the unofficial mayor would blow Congress’ numbers out of the water.   The tongue-in-cheek campaign ad for Mayor Stubbs, a seventeen-year-old cat, expresses the frustration felt by many in what has been a contentious an ad-filled campaign season.

Nationwide, Stubbs may well have more name recognition than the actual candidates for U.S. Senate.  After all, he’s made it in to the Friskies 50, a list of the internet’s most influential cats.  His campaign ad suggests he, too, wants to make a change.

At Nagley’s General Store in Talkeetna, Stubbs’ place of residence, the staff says they are not behind the video.  Jolene Pate was working the counter on Tuesday, and says that, while they didn’t come up with the idea, the staff is on board.

“We would have made a whole schpiel for Stubbs…put out flyers and everything.”

Jolene says she’d be willing to consider writing in the seventeen-year-old cat for the Senate.

“Yeah, I think so.  I think he’d make a much better senator than anyone we’ve got on our election ballot.”

Writing in animals or fictional characters is hardly new.  Ask around, and it’s easy to find someone who has written in Mickey Mouse or something similar, but what about Stubbs?  In addition to the Nagley’s staff, I spoke with a few other people on Talkeetna’s Main Street who said voting for Stubbs wasn’t out of the question, mostly due to frustration with partisan politics.  A local DJ who goes by Mark of the Wild, went one step further, though.

“I did vote in the Governor’s race, but everything else, I wrote in, with my right hand, ‘Mayor Stubbs’…Why not?  He’s great on the issues.”

Mark’s reasoning also had to do with frustration with the current slate of politicians.

While the campaign is obviously tongue-in-cheek, and a victory for Talkeetna’s honorary mayor is out of the question, the language of the ad, as well as the response to it, indicates that the frustration over this election cycle is no joke.