As the 2016 presidential race gears up, candidates turn to Internet commerce to boost coffers, widen the small-donor base, collect personal data on supporters and get their campaign message out.
Online stores selling all kinds of merchandise is also a good way to gets some digs at opponents.
Among the items sold on the Rand Paul campaign website is “Hillary’s Hard Drive,” a joke gift — with a serious $99.95 price tag – part of a number of items intended as a jab at Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner.
Although it may not be high on the Kentucky senator’s policy list, an online store devoted to picking on his Democratic rival fits right in with a modern campaign.
Olivier Knox of Yahoo! Politics writes that it also serves as a model of how modern presidential politics is embracing the inescapable rise of Internet commerce.
“In the general election, it’s a must-have, absolutely — a central part of any digital campaign,” Matt Lira, a former staffer for U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, told Yahoo News. “It’s a cross-section of three of any campaign’s priorities: Fundraising, recruitment, and messaging.”
Lira served as digital director for the Wisconsin lawmaker during his run as a Republican vice presidential candidate and as deputy executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee prior to the 2014 midterm election cycle.
“Plus, you’ve got to give the collectors something to collect,” he said. “They gotta have buttons!”
Campaign paraphernalia has been around as long as America. Knox notes that an individual at George Washington’s inauguration sold buttons reading, “Long Live the President G.W.”
Mark Evans, as director of member services for the American Political Items Collectors Association, studies the assorted objects used to promote campaigns. Founded in 1945, the group specializes in “collecting, preservation and study of these campaign artifacts.”
Since George Washington, Evans told Yahoo, faces and names of presidential candidates have appeared on “fans, flags, cups, saucers, plates, china, straight razors, spoons, thimbles — oh yeah, in the 1920s, when women got the right to vote, there were lots of thimbles.
“In the ’80s, with fears about AIDS, there were campaign condoms,” he added. “These were all made and sold by private companies, private vendors.”
After the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign, however, presidential campaigns made a significant change in the process, bringing the business in-house instead of allowing third-party vendors to make the money.
Now, online commerce has transformed purchases into de facto campaign donations, as well as providing an active personal data gathering effort perfect for targeting and turning out voters.
