Driving Political Opinion

According to Des Moines attorney Gordon Fischer, former Iowa Democratic Party chairman, the bumper sticker still has a role to play in campaigns today, although the yard sign is probably more important. “We say politics is a science,” said Fischer, but he admits that a lot of decisions about things like how many yard signs or bumper stickers or TV ads to buy are done by gut instinct and the constraints of campaign finances, rather than by any empirically based formula. “Anything your opponents are doing you want to do too. If one side has them, the other side needs them.”

While Fischer thinks bill boards may be over rated he says the yard sign sends a more powerful message because people get to see who their neighbor is supporting and that can help encourage others to do likewise. Decisions on spending are unique to each race and typically candidates spend as much as they have and can.

Former deputy director of presidential personnel in the Carter White House, Lori Baux of Ames says bumper stickers can be a cost effective tool, especially for a candidate who doesn’t have as much money in the bank and may be lower in the polls. If a candidate lacks the funds for a big TV media buy, the bumper sticker can be a great way to get their name out there. Baux – pronounced like box – was a campaign field op for the Carter campaign with lots of experience in grass roots organizing says campaigns have to divide their financing between staff, travel, polling, TV and direct mail media and peripheral materials such as yard signs, buttons, bumper stickers and literature. Baux says she is not seeing campaign literature being left behind by the candidates when out stumping as often today as it was years ago. It may be that campaign organizers realized that a great deal of pamphlets and other such literature gets tossed and isn’t the best bang for the buck.

David Oman, executive director of the Earthpark project, says bumper stickers can be an important piece of retail politics. Oman who was a top aid to Iowa Governor Robert Ray in the 1980s and who also sought the Republican nomination for governor in 1998, said that he learned a lot about the role of retail politics in successful campaigning from his former boss who knew that you couldn’t just hand out bumper stickers at a campaign event. If you want to actually get them on cars, Oman says you need a team of volunteers out in the parking lot afterwards offering to attach the bumper sticker to cars. Otherwise a candidate risks having people take them for souvenirs rather than displaying them as campaign advertising on their vehicle. 

According to a webposting by Jack Yoest, Adjunct Professor of Management in the Business Technologies Division of the Northern Virginia Community College and co-owner of Distro-Cal, a marketing company in the advertising specialty industry located in Lanham , Maryland, research shows the bumper sticker can have an in-kind equivalent value of $250 to the political candidate.  This same information is attributed to Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) in a posting by Matt Lewis, who maintains a blog, Matt Lewis & the News. If this is true, that’s an amazing return on the investment of 20 to 90 cents for the production of a bumper sticker.

[Fischer’s blog is Iowa True Blue. Read about David Oman’s project, Earthpark and Reasoned Audacity, the political blog of Prof. Jack Yoest and his wife, Dr. Charmaine Yoest. You can find the reference to Rep. Roscoe Bartlett’s comments on the bumper sticker at Matt Lewis & the News. Baux doesn’t have a blog or a website, but if she did is should be called “Outside the Baux.” On a fun note, Baux cautions political organizers against ever misspelling the word public by leaving out the “l” especially when putting the words “public meeting” on campaign flyers. She says that is not a good campaign mistake to make, and she knows from her own personal campaign experience.]