Dog-gone: Canine candidate re-elected Minnesota town mayor

This Saturday, Jan. 10, 2015 photo Duke a 7 year old Great Pyrenees who was elected mayor In Cormorant, Minn. lounges on a couch with David Rick during the 2015 World Dog Awards at the Barker Hanger in Santa Monica. Awards season in Hollywood has begun. For at least one show, though, there will be no "Lights, Camera, Action," no tables to maneuver around, no long speeches and no seat fillers. That's because the show and nearly every award in it is going to the dogs.  Canine winners, along with a few humans and a cat, will be presented with golden fire hydrant statuettes. Dogs will lounge on sofas and overstuffed chairs in front of the stage. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
This Saturday, Jan. 10, 2015 photo shows Duke, a Great Pyrenees who was elected mayor in Cormorant, Minnesota, lounging on a couch with David Rick, his owner, during the 2015 World Dog Awards at the Barker Hanger in Santa Monica. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
(AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
(AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
(AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
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This Saturday, Jan. 10, 2015 photo Duke a 7 year old Great Pyrenees who was elected mayor In Cormorant, Minn. lounges on a couch with David Rick during the 2015 World Dog Awards at the Barker Hanger in Santa Monica. Awards season in Hollywood has begun. For at least one show, though, there will be no "Lights, Camera, Action," no tables to maneuver around, no long speeches and no seat fillers. That's because the show and nearly every award in it is going to the dogs.  Canine winners, along with a few humans and a cat, will be presented with golden fire hydrant statuettes. Dogs will lounge on sofas and overstuffed chairs in front of the stage. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)

CORMORANT, Minn. (AP) — The four-legged mayor of a northwestern Minnesota village greets voters like a true politician.

Duke, a 9-year-old Great Pyrenees, won a third one-year term as honorary mayor of Cormorant Township on Saturday.

The big, shaggy white dog was overwhelmingly re-elected at the sixth annual Cormorant Daze Festival. Anyone could pay a dollar and cast a vote.

Cormorant resident Karen Nelson says Duke “greets everyone” who comes to the village of about 20 people nestled among lakes about 180 miles northwest of Minneapolis.

Nelson says the canine mayor also is popular with children. She says Duke “can have 10 kids on him, and he don’t care.”

Duke was first elected in a write-in vote in 2014.

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