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 after a character) in Bertram’s name as an nod to the pup who, a well-known dog influencer with hundreds of thousands social media followers before the election.
But when they realized he was also in a joke mayor competition, they quickly rallied so he could walk away the top dog, said Grayson, who runs an art gallery. Some have even created AI videos of Bertram doing random stuff.
“The most embarrassing thing they did, they posted on Twitter a fundraiser or something but you had to vote in the dog election in order to enter the sweepstakes to get some coin or something,” she said.
“Can you imagine paying someone to vote in the dog mayor joke election,” she added with a laugh.
Bertram is now expected to face Enzo’s replacement, the resilient Simon the Basset Cattle Dog, in the finals on Nov. 11. Simon initially lost to Enzo in the semi-finals.
“Everybody is so stressed out and miserable with the human election, this was supposed to be a little fun thing,” Grayson said. “It’s ridiculous that humans just can’t have a nice thing, they have to make it problematic.”
Caputo and Mann both said the organizer of the election, Stephen Calabria, hasn’t done enough to cool the hostility surrounding the race and hasn’t properly handled the crypto meddling.
The two said they received mixed messages when they brought their concerns to him and claimed they joined the competition under false pretenses.
Calabria, of Harlem, said he didn’t have time to talk on Monday, but referred The Post to a social media post he made on Sunday addressing the controversy.
“We don’t condone negativity directed towards anyone, canine or human, and do not support anyone trying to buy or pay for votes,” he said in the statement on Instagram.
“That said, we can’t moderate every conversation on the internet, can’t control whether people in the global crypto marketplace organize for a candidate for dog mayor, and can’t dictate each person’s motivations for casting their vote for a given candidate.”
Calabria told The Post over the summer he started the fur-filled election to get away from the political insanity that has engulfed the country, and raise awareness for pet adoptions and voter registration.
Fifteen dogs from across the five boroughs entered the second annual event after East Village Basset Hound Sally Long Dog won the inaugural election in 2022.
Mann urged other prospective dog owners to think twice before entering a future canine mayoral election.
“I’d really warn them to think hard before entering and I think it’s one of the reasons it’s important to speak out,” she said.
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