The town of Chester, Montana — a tiny little spec on the map that is home to about 1,000 people — has found itself in the center of a hotly-contended political battle. Puffed cornmeal snack mascot Chester Cheetah is running for mayor against Chester’s real life incumbent, Noel Walston, in a fake mayoral campaign. Chester Cheetah’s run was first announced two weeks ago in the above campaign video on the Cheetos YouTube channel, but since then, things have gotten downright ugly, and it’s nearly tearing the sleepy little town of Chester apart.
Shortly after his campaign was announced, Walston ran the following smear campaign, attacking Chester’s character and the fact that he is not actually even a person:
Walston then followed up with this “Say Yes to Noel” ad:
Chester fired back an attack ad of his own, and you know, I have to say, for a fake candidate and a fictional, made-up character, he does make some excellent points: His name literally does start with the word “no.”
The heated race is also naturally getting some major coverage on the fake local news:
You know, I have to say, as silly as this is and an obvious attempt at a viral marketing campaign (which clearly worked — congrats, Cheetos), in all earnestness, I would probably vote for a candidate that ran on a platform of free, unlimited cheese snacks. You know, just so long as the rest of their platform didn’t involve some kind of genocide warfare, of course. I mean, I do have some integrity.