SAN DIEGO (CBS 8) - On Tuesday, San Diegans will choose the city's next mayor in a special election to replace Bob Filner. For weeks now, we've been peppering the candidates with serious questions about the city's future. Now we're admittedly getting a little silly with a pet profile.
Political candidates are always trying to put a spin on their talking points. But as Harry Truman once said, if you want a friend in politics, buy a dog.
Nathan Fletcher's family has two dogs -- a Lab named Jagger and a rescued vizsla named Rez.
"I feed them, I walk them, I bathe them, I rub their bellies. I love my dogs," Fletcher said.
Mike Aguirre owns two rescue dogs -- Woodrow, a German shorthair pointer, and Winston, a basset hound that travels with him often to public appearances, and looks just like him.
"Oh the basset hound, I'm just a dead ringer for the basset hound. People look at us and think oh he's obviously related to you. I certainly don't look like the German shorthair pointer, let's put it that way," Aguirre said.
Like any savvy politician, Aguirre supports both sides of the animal aisle and also owns a cat named Tiger who loves to hog his computer space.
"I'm embarrassed to say this but I find myself working around Tiger," he said.
David Alvarez' wife Xochitl is pregnant with a baby boy due in March, so they're carefully weighing their options.
"We don't have pets right now. We have a baby on the way so we want to wait until that one grows a little bit older," he said.
But Alvarez says his 4-year old daughter Izel Is begging him to fill up their house with kittens.
We weren't surprised to hear every candidate we spoke to loves animals and the pets they grew up with. Kevin Faulconer's family owns two guinea pigs named Reeses and Sonic, who like to make themselves comfortable on the family couch...
"They are great guinea pigs, lots of personality. Jack and Lauren love them," he said.
From dogs to cats and guinea pigs too, the candidates all agree at the end of a long day, a pet is sometimes a politician's only friend...
"When they see me, they actually come running up and they're happy. I'm not sure I can say that about very many people that know me, that they're always that happy to see me. It's a terrible confession," Aguirre joked.