No challenger will face a flawless record, and a rival bodega’s own cat endorses rather than compete
Bodega Cat Runs For Second Term Unopposed, Approval Rating Now Exceeds Every Statewide Elected Official Combined
NEW YORK – The bodega cat who won a stunning upset community board seat last year has announced, through his campaign committee of concerned neighborhood residents, his intention to seek a second term, running entirely unopposed after a citywide search failed to produce a single challenger willing to face what pollsters describe as “the most durable approval rating in documented New York political history.”
The Numbers Behind the Campaign
An informal poll conducted by neighborhood volunteers found the incumbent cat, known simply as Miércoles, maintaining a 96 percent approval rating among constituents, a figure that has, if anything, grown since his first term, driven largely by his continued practice of occupying whatever document the board considers most consequential in a given week, a habit residents have come to treat as a genuine informal legislative signal. “You want to know what matters this session, you look at what he’s sitting on,” said longtime board observer Harold Feingold. “He has never once been wrong about priorities. I cannot say the same for several human members of this board, myself sometimes included.”
Why Nobody Is Challenging Him
Political operatives who considered mounting a challenge, speaking anonymously to avoid the specific reputational risk of running against a beloved neighborhood cat, cited the essentially insurmountable logistics of the race. “You cannot attack his record,” one prospective challenger said. “His record is flawless. He has never taken a bribe, never missed a session, never once grandstanded for a camera. The strongest opposition research anyone has produced against him is a single incident where he slept through a zoning vote, and residents did not see that as a scandal. They saw it as restraint.”
His Legislative Priorities Going Forward
Campaign volunteers, translating what they describe as “his demonstrated preferences” into a formal platform, have identified several priorities for the coming term based on where Miércoles has recently been observed sitting most consistently: continued opposition to a proposed rezoning that would affect several small businesses on his block, support for expanded outdoor seating regulations, and what volunteers describe as “an apparent, consistent interest in matters affecting the block’s remaining independent grocers,” a priority they attribute to his own professional background.
The Endorsements Rolling In
Miércoles has received formal or informal endorsements from every sitting board member, the local councilmember’s office, which issued a carefully worded statement praising “the incumbent’s consistent presence and demonstrated community trust,” and, more surprisingly, a rival bodega several blocks away whose own cat reportedly endorsed Miércoles rather than run against him, an act neighborhood observers have called “genuinely statesmanlike, for a cat, and frankly for most humans in this business.”
How the Bodega Itself Has Adapted
Torres Grocery, Miércoles’s actual place of employment and residence, has embraced its role as the district’s de facto capitol building, with owner Yolanda Reyes confirming that constituent visits, residents stopping by specifically to discuss neighborhood concerns while Miércoles listens from atop the counter, have become a regular part of the store’s daily rhythm. “People come in for milk, they end up telling him about a pothole,” Reyes said. “I do not know what he does with this information exactly. I know the pothole on the corner got fixed within a month of him first hearing about it, so something is working.”
The Question of Presidential Ambitions
Asked, largely in jest, whether Miércoles might eventually seek higher office, campaign organizer Yolanda Reyes was firm in her response, echoing sentiments she has expressed since his first term began. “He is not leaving the bodega,” she said. “The bodega is where the constituent services happen. You come in, you get your coffee, you say your problem out loud, he listens. That is the entire job, done correctly, and I do not think City Hall would improve on that formula, honestly, I think City Hall would ruin it.”
What Happens on Election Day
With no challenger filed and the deadline for petitions now passed, Miércoles’s second term is considered a formality, with the board scheduling a brief, informal swearing-in ceremony that will consist, per tradition, of touching his paw to the district’s charter and immediately returning to his preferred position atop the morning’s most consequential paperwork.
Wider Reaction
The story has drawn renewed citywide affection, with residents in neighboring districts reportedly asking, with a mixture of humor and genuine envy, whether their own community boards might consider recruiting from the local bodega cat population, a suggestion at least one rival district’s board chair has, per sources, “not entirely dismissed.”
Coverage of the district’s unusual political fixture has already reached the tabloids, with the New York Post running a brief item on the reelection bid, and community board culture more broadly tracked by THE CITY, whose reporting on hyperlocal governance has never previously required covering an incumbent with whiskers. Whatever the future holds for the district, residents seem largely at peace with the arrangement, several noting that a government official who never grandstands, never leaks to the press, and asks for nothing beyond a warm spot near the register represents, in their view, a genuinely underrated model of public service.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/