Rob Ford campaign goes big on bobbleheads
Filling the campaign database, not sales, might be the point of offering such trinkets, U.S. expert says.

Thestar.com
April 14, 2014
By Betsy Powell

Rob Ford is banking on bobbleheads to help fund his re-election campaign. It might sound like a wacky idea but political watchers wonder if it’s not a careful strategy borrowed from the commercial and carnival side of American politics.

“Rob Ford and his brother, I tell people, are either the smartest people in the room or the dumbest and I don’t know,” says veteran political fundraiser Ralph Lean.

Lean, a Toronto lawyer who has been raising money for politicians for more than three decades — but not this election — can recall no other mainstream Canadian politician choosing to raise money this way.

In conventional fundraising, a candidate assembles a team that stages dinners and events, charges admission and encourages donors to cut cheques.

Councillor Doug Ford, the mayor’s brother and campaign manager, plans to unveil their new “themed” Ford bobbleheads, mugs and keychains at Thursday’s campaign launch at the Toronto Congress Centre.

“With Rob Ford, we raise $20 cheques,” Doug Ford has said, dismissing the importance of big donors. A $300-a-ticket dinner is being held in Concord, Ont., next month.

Last week, Doug Ford was asked what percentage of fundraising money he expects will come from the sale of Ford-abilia. “I don’t have a clue, guys.”

But that may be beside the point.

Patrick Ruffini, president of Washington-based digital agency Engage, thinks the Fords have cleverly lifted a page from the modern American political playbook.

“They (bobbleheads) don’t necessarily net a lot of money, because of the product costs and what not, but it’s another person to add to their database, and subsequently ask to give more money later on in the campaign,” or be contacted to volunteer, says Ruffini, whose agency has worked on a number of political campaigns.

“Obviously, there’s a lot of interest in Mayor Ford so I would imagine this is a good opportunity for them to reach people and for them to identify who those supporters are.”

There is nothing forbidding politicians from raising funds by hawking merchandise, though election ephemera have never been a big thing in Canada.

Campaign-related material kept by Toronto’s museum services and archives is largely limited to candidate brochures, newspaper clippings and buttons –though one alderman, in 1972, stuck his name and photo on balloons, pens, matchbooks and tiny emery boards.

He stayed in office for 25 years.

Novelty campaign items are a mainstay of American politics, says Harry Rubenstein, a curator with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. His division collects political campaign material — some 150,000 pieces, and studies it.

“Selling little metal donkeys, and elephants and stuffed animals and funny hats, all of that is part of the American political campaign process,” Rubenstein says. Campaign headquarters used to set up tiny shops to sell officially sanctioned memorabilia. Today that’s done online.

Long before U.S. President Barack Obama action figures, there were George Washington medals turned into buttons, Andrew Jackson snuff boxes and commemorative Harry Truman plates.

“If you can get somebody to buy an Eisenhower pot holder and use it in their home you’re not only more likely to get their vote for that election, you might build party loyalty that carries onto elections in the future,” says Rubenstein.

“On the other hand, the reason people buy it, they want some active way to participate in the electoral process beyond simply going in and casting a vote.”

Smaller donations can’t be discounted.

In 2012, Obama raised more money for his re-election bid from small-dollar donors than Republican Mitt Romney collected from all of his contributors, according to an analysis by the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics.

“Obama brought in approximately $58.5 million . . . from individuals who donated $200 or less, successfully rallying a massive base of online donors through frequent email pitches and solicitations to purchase merchandise that ranges from T-shirts to coffee mugs bearing Obama’s birth certificate to the “Fired Up, Ready to Grill” apron,” Michael Beckel wrote on the center’s website.

Lean says the Fords’ scheme shouldn’t be underestimated. “He could blow the socks off with his paraphernalia.”

Lean helped Toronto mayoralty candidate George Smitherman raise $2.2 million in the 2010 election — while Ford ended up $800,000 in the hole. “Money was not the issue in that campaign because we got killed,” he says, referring to Ford’s victory. This year the campaign spending limit is $1.3 million.

Consider the swarms of people who continue to want photos with Ford whenever he’s in public and the long lineups at Toronto City Hall before Christmas when Ford sat for hours signing hundreds of plastic figurines with his likeness. The money raised was donated to charity.

No one would line up to buy a Stephen Harper coffee mug, says Lean, adding quickly he loves the prime minister.

“People don’t like politicians, generally,” he says. “Ford is a phenomenon like I’ve never seen. There might be a business case you can make money through the sale of paraphernalia, but only for Ford.”