Arizona’s weirdest campaign merch

We regret to inform you that there are still 75 days until the general election.

That means several more weeks of petty political feuds, street corners covered in campaign signs and attack ads haunting you every commercial break.

So, for a brief respite ahead of the Nov. 3 general election, let’s talk about the important stuff.

Campaign merchandise.

This election season, Arizona’s candidates and political parties have stocked their campaign stores with delightful ways to show your allegiance.

For candidates, turning a name into a recognizable brand is an effective way to gin up support. And, of course, a lot of money.

WinRed, a fundraising platform for Republican candidates, calls campaign merch a “method of optimizing small-dollar donations.” In other words, someone who might hesitate to hand a campaign $30 may be more willing to do it for a T-shirt in return.

The strategy appears to pay off.

In March, WinRed announced GOP campaigns had sold more than a quarter of a billion dollars in merch since it launched its merch-buying platform in 2019. The average donation, the platform determined, was about 32% higher than a typical online contribution.

And last month, Democrats’ major fundraising platform, ActBlue, rolled out a tool that treats merch sales as contributions, turning each buyer into a donor campaigns can track and solicit again.

But all that campaign cash doesn’t necessarily mean engaged voters.

Campaign merch can actually have the reverse effect, researchers at the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management found in a study published last year, and lead to a phenomenon they coined “political slacktivism.”

That is, when supporters buy a campaign shirt, button or other relatively inexpensive item, they tend to feel like they’ve already done enough for the cause, and are less likely to put in more money later.

Whether campaign merch is actually an effective tactic or not, there’s plenty of entertainment value on the shelves.

So we went shopping.

Senate President Warren Petersen didn’t have to establish much of a brand identity to be successful in his deep red, Gilbert-based Legislative District 14.

But now that he’s vying for statewide office as the Republican nominee for attorney general, Petersen is leaning into a particularly patriotic brand identity.

And for the low price of $20, you can celebrate America’s favorite pastime by whacking golf balls with Petersen’s name around the course.

Ladies: Have you ever wanted to support your favorite chief election officer’s reelection campaign, only to realize the T-shirt options had NO flowers on them?

Secretary of State Adrian Fontes has you covered.

Fontes’ “Women for Fontes” 100% cotton tee comes in both a unisex cut and a more form-fitting, hip-hugging option to accentuate your democracy-loving curves.

And if you really want to stick it to Fontes’ far-right Republican challenger, Rep. Alex Kolodin, consider the Pride-themed canvas tote.

By our count, Arizona has just three Libertarian candidates on the ballot this year, and all three are running for Congress.

It’s a shame, really, because the Arizona Libertarian Party has one of the most extensive merch stores we’ve seen this cycle, including this objectively incredible “Sunday Gunday” tee.

And it comes in 12 colors!

Unfortunately, your baby isn’t much use to Arizona’s candidates this election cycle — they can’t vote, and even worse, they can’t donate.

But if your child wears onesies in the 3- to 24-month size range, they can still pull their limited weight.

The campaigns of both Gov. Katie Hobbs and congressional hopeful JoAnna Mendoza are selling campaign onesies for Arizona’s tiniest political supporters.

Why kiss babies when you can brand them?

If you were one of the lucky few who attended CD5 hopeful Mark Lamb’s April meet-and-greet, that wholesome photo with Lamb, his wife, Janel Lamb, and the family dog, Lotus, may hit a little differently now.

For a nominal $50 donation, supporters could snatch a photo with Lotus and the Lambs, plus a commemorative bandana that says: “God, Family, Freedom & Dogs.”

The catchphrase didn’t age well.

A month later, news broke that the now-Republican nominee for Arizona’s 5th Congressional District allegedly has a torrid history of sexting and threatening women, while he and his wife allegedly maintained a sexually open social circle involving friends and other women.

Lotus, for the record, has remained scandal-free.

Attorney General Kris Mayes’ “mayes against the machine” shirt is pretty damn cool.

But we also may be biased, considering we used that exact phrase as a headline more than a year ago.

We’re still waiting for our royalty check.

Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 2-to-1 in Arizona’s deep-red LD3, anchored in Scottsdale, Fountain Hills and Cave Creek.

So it’s safe to assume the district’s Republican committee includes plenty of fervent Charlie Kirk supporters.

But this offering in the “LD3 Republican Swag Store” makes for a slightly odd tribute.

We’re not sure whether “Charlie’s Angel” is meant as a reference to the hit ’70s TV show starring Farrah Fawcett — but that’s the pretty obvious pop culture association.

And considering “Charlie’s Angels” is best known for its overtly sexualized trio of crime-fighting women, it’s a strange bit of source material for a memorial shirt.

The Pima County Democratic Party has a pretty robust merch operation that includes T-shirts, hats, buttons and stickers for Southern Arizona’s political left.

But if wearing your politics isn’t your thing, the party also offers mini statues of President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein gleefully holding hands, made, according to the website, “by a volunteer here in Pima County.”

The photo on the merch site is a little fuzzy, but the design appears to be a miniature recreation of “Best Friends Forever,” the protest sculpture of Trump and Epstein that was briefly installed on the National Mall last year before being removed.

And if the $35 the Pima County Dems are asking for feels a little steep, the design is also widely available online as a 3D-print file.

For $15, the LD12 Republican Committee will send you a patriotic T-shirt that doubles as light reading.

The Ahwatukee-area GOP group crammed an impressively exhaustive list of election-security demands onto the tee: voter ID, hand-counted paper ballots and no mail voting — except for “military, disabled, those who can not be at the polling station,” the shirt specifies.

And all that information is conveniently printed exactly where you want strangers staring: “full front chest,” the listing notes.