Forget Obama and Romney, there is one candidate all Arizona fans can get behind.

Arizona mascot Wilma T. Wildcat is competing in the Capital One Mascot Challenge. Last year was the first time an Arizona mascot competed in the challenge, and Wilma’s husband, Wilbur, made it to the final four.

Wilma and Ms. Wuf of North Carolina State are the first female mascots to appear in the mascot challenge.

“This is the first year that they’ve had some girl power,” Arizona cheerleading and mascots adviser Roberta Quiroz said. “So we’re excited about that, we’re hoping to take her at least as far as Wilbur went.”

There are three ways to vote: on capitalonebowl.com, by tweeting #CapitalOneWilma and by liking Wilma on facebook.com/capitalone.

“This year it’s a little different, they don’t have texting to vote, everything’s either Facebook or Twitter or online,” Quiroz said. “We really have to get the voting manpower out through those avenues … I think texting was a little easier for people to do.”

As of yesterday, Wilma trailed Ms. Wuf 53 percent to 47 in the first round match-up.

“The great thing about that is, for being selected we automatically get $5,000 that we can put in our mascot endowment, which then we are able to pull from and give some scholarship money to our performers,” Quiroz said. “They don’t get paid to do this, it’s all on their own free time.”

Though only Wilbur competed last year, Quiroz said that because Wilbur and Wilma are married, both mascots appeared in the Capital One videos so the Wildcats received double exposure.

“We actually got more bang for our buck,” Quiroz said.

The Capital One Mascot Challenge has been around since 2002 and the past winners were the mascots of Nevada, Old Dominion, Cincinnati, Iowa State, Akron, Washington State, Nebraska, South Carolina and Montana.

Each week the mascots will compete with one another in a round robin format, and the top eight will advance to the playoffs after 12 weeks.