Hold My Snacks: Pirate’s Booty Founder Attempts a Seaside Coup
A snack food magnate declared himself mayor of the Village of Sea Cliff, on Long Island. The voters said otherwise.
Robert Ehrlich, who calls himself Captain Bootyhead, on Election Day in the Long Island village of Sea Cliff.Credit...Johnny Milano for The New York Times
March 19, 2025Updated 3:13 p.m. ET
The little village of Sea Cliff, on Long Island’s north shore, re-elected its mayor on Tuesday.
For the normally placid small town, the election capped eight turbulent days and seemingly ended a quixotic write-in campaign by a brash snack-food mogul.
But elections these days don’t always end when they’re over. And so even before the final vote had been counted, that snack food mogul — who professionally uses the title Captain Bootyhead — declared that the election was “rigged” and that he was the mayor of Sea Cliff.
He received 62 votes.
“Our movement continues,” he announced. “This place needs a voice, and at the moment it’s me.”
It all started last Monday, when Robert Ehrlich, the founder of Pirate’s Booty Snacks, marched into the Village Hall in Sea Cliff (pop. 5,000) and announced that he was now the mayor. Everyone else, he said, was fired.
Mr. Ehrlich, 66, was invoking a 2009 state law that empowers residents to dissolve their town or reformulate it. The first step is to gather signatures from 10 percent of the town’s voters. Mr. Ehrlich waved an envelope that he claimed held 1,800 signatures. He declined to show them to anyone because he said the signers were afraid of retribution.
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