FAIR HAVEN, VT — In the end, cute kittens and cuddly puppies didn’t had a chance in a Vermont town’s first ever mayoral election. Residents of Fair Haven elected Lincoln, a 3-year-old Nubian goat, in the contest Town Manager Joe Gunter dreamed up to raise money for a school playground at Fair Haven Grade School.
Lincoln could be considered a reluctant politician. She didn’t want to come in from the field, but apparently was all in once she was loaded in a crate and hoisted into the back of Christopher and Sally Stanton’s pickup truck. She bleated to her constituents all the way to the town hall, according to news reports of offbeat election.
Wearing a white sash reading “MAYOR,” Lincoln was sworn in. She put her right front hoof on an ink pad and signed the necessary paperwork, then promptly pooped, the Burlington Free Press reported.
The election of Mayor Lincoln from a field of 13 candidates got the goat of some residents of the town of about 2,500. With 53 votes cast, the goat was elected mayor by a margin of 13 votes, beating out Sammie Viger, a dog whose owner said would thank voters with a face lick, the Rutland Herald reported.
“It’s been baaaaad so far,” a municipal employee told the Free Press, which quipped in its account of theelection that the person declined to be identified for “fear of retaliation — of butting heads — with the new administration.”
During her tenure as Fair Haven’s mayor, Lincoln will make public appearances and march in the Memorial Day parade, wearing her custom-made sash.
Gunter told the Rutland paper that he came up to elect a pet as mayorafter seeing a news story about Omena, Michigan, a town of about 300 that has been electing pets as mayor for about 10 years to raise money for its local historical society. That town, which recently elected a cat named Sweet Tart, charges $1 a vote.
It costs a lot more to buy a vote in Fair Haven.
Residents paid $5 for the right to cast ballots in the election. Lincoln was submitted as a candidate by Christopher Stanton, a grade school math teacher, on behalf of his 4-year-old-grandson, Sullivan Clark. In the nomination, Stanton said Lincoln is “a very nice goat.”
“She’s just a big pet, is really what she is,” Stanton told the Rutland Herald.
Gunter told the newspaper the fundraising idea turned out to be a good civics lesson and gets kids involved in the government of Fair Haven.
“We had a way better turnout than I thought,” he said. “It’s little things like this that make a community.”
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