NYC dog mayor election gets chaotic as crypto bros allegedly pay for votes and cute pup pulled from finals
And you thought the race for president was a dog fight.A wholesome New York City dog mayoral election has been hijacked by cryptocurrency fanatics that are backing one paw-ticular pup — with tensions running so high one owner pulled her Shih Tzu out of the finals.The competition for Honorary NYC Dog Mayor hit a snag over the weekend when adorable Enzo the Shih Tzu was yanked from the heated race by owner Olivia Caputo, who told The Post the race became too negative — with crypto fans allegedly even looking to buy votes.Caputo said on Monday members of the crypto community are using her dog’s one-time finals opponent, “doggy influencer” Bertram the Pomeranian, to market their BERT coin and are even offering financial incentives in exchange for votes.“That’s like really taken a lot of fun out of it,” Caputo said, calling the maneuver “election fraud.”“We signed up to be part of something that’s uplifting and fair and it’s all about dog lovers,” Caputo continued.“What I’ve seen is people don’t actually care about Bert.
They only care about pumping the value of the coin.”Big Apple pet owner Isabelle Mann’s lovable pup, Ziggy, went up against Bertram during an earlier round when the crypto army first started barking around the election.“It just quickly escalated into something that was just not in the spirit of the election at all,” Mann said.“Buying the votes was just especially crazy.”Caputo said Enzo has also been the target of nasty comments online or in a group chat the owner joined with most of the vitriol coming from cryptocurrency bros.
Other mean comments have come during a debate over adopting rescue dogs versus getting a dog from a breeder, she said.Bertram’s owner, Kathy Grayson, has made clear she isn’t associated with any of the crypto backers and said she even asked them to stop meddling at one point.She told The Post crypto members across the globe initially created the meme coin (cryptocurrency named a...