People continue to show their support for candidates with buttons, shirts and yard signs.

By David Skolnick

People continue to show their support for candidates with buttons, shirts and yard signs.

YOUNGSTOWN — Though the presidential campaigns are high-tech operations, they haven’t abandoned the basics.

Democrat Barack Obama sent text messages announcing Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate to millions of people. The campaigns of Obama and Republican John McCain — as well as their supporters and detractors — use the Internet to get out their messages.

Type “Barack Obama” into YouTube.com and you’ll get more than 200,000 videos. Typing “John McCain” gets you a list of more than 100,000 choices.

But the campaigns still use traditional ways to “sell” their candidates: Buttons, shirts, bumper stickers and yard signs.

The Mahoning County Republican headquarters in the Boardman Plaza on U.S. Route 224 in Boardman looks like a GOP flea market.

There are at least a dozen different buttons with the names or pictures of McCain and Sarah Palin, his vice presidential running mate.

“They don’t stay here too long,” said Tracey Winbush, a McCain campaign volunteer. “Also, the shirts do phenomenal. It’s like having school team pride. You want to show it off. It’s also a good conversation piece. People get stopped in the store with a T-shirt and are asked about their candidate. You wear the shirt to the gym or the ball game on the weekend, and it gives you pride and let’s people know who you support.”

Except for yard signs, everything else comes with a price at GOP headquarters, from $3 for a small button to $10 for a shirt or a large button. The proceeds go toward food and beverages for campaign volunteers as well as to keep the lights and heat on at the headquarters, Winbush said.

Over at Obama’s Mahoning County headquarters on Market Street in Boardman, the merchandise is free, but the choices are more limited.

The campaign has yard signs, hand-held cardboard signs, stickers and bumper stickers.

There were shirts and buttons, but “as fast as we get them, they’re gone,” said Bernice Williams of Boardman, an Obama campaign volunteer. “Everybody wants them, but we don’t get them fast enough to give them out. Friends keep asking me for signs and buttons, but we can’t keep them around.”

Joseph Ruggiero, who came from Woodland, Calif., to volunteer at the Youngstown office for Obama, said the headquarters “receives tons of requests for buttons and yard signs. We can’t meet the high demand. People in Ohio like their yard signs and buttons.”

During the 2004 campaign, there were plenty of “W ’04” [for George W. Bush] and John “Kerry for President” bumper stickers on the back of vehicles. There are not as many in this area for this campaign.

“People are hesitant to put them on because they’re hard to get off,” Winbush said. “Some tape them on. One guy cut it out and put pieces of it on his license plate cover.”

One person not worried about removing a “McCain Country First” bumper sticker from the back of her white SUV Jeep is Darlene Becker of Boardman, an emergency room technician.

“I don’t plan to take it off,” she said as she loaded several McCain yard signs into the back of her vehicle after a visit to GOP headquarters.

Besides the yard signs, Becker purchased a Palin button, a McCain pin and bumper stickers for her friends.

Bumper stickers have an adverse effect on some, said Paul Sracic, chairman of Youngstown State University’s political science department.

“If it says something negative or dismissive about a candidate, it might get people angry who are driving behind that car and are forced to see that bumper sticker for 15 minutes,” he said. “It might get people to vote out of anger.”

Most people who buy buttons do so to collect them rather than wear them, said Winbush and Sracic.

“They’re collector’s items more than anything else,” Winbush said. “People are button collectors. Imagine what a John F. Kennedy button would go for now.”

A check of ebay.com shows 1960 Kennedy buttons don’t go for very much. Most are under $10.

“You only see buttons at rallies,” Sracic said. “We know you’re voting for that candidate. That’s why you’re there.”

Yard signs are still very popular in the Valley and can be influential, he said.

“With a yard sign, you’re sending a message to your neighbors,” Sracic said. “There’s a lot of people who don’t pay much attention to politics who will see their neighbors with the same yard signs and vote for that candidate because of the signs.”

Those who closely follow politics “overestimate what voters know when they go to the polls” and a few yard signs could sway those people, Sracic said.

Though Becker can’t wear her buttons to work, employees at other places don’t have that problem — as long as it’s reasonable.

First Energy-Ohio Edison, which employs about 500 in the Mahoning Valley, doesn’t have a policy prohibiting its employees from wearing campaign buttons or shirts, said Mark Durbin, a company spokesman.

“All we ask for is moderation,” he said. “We have a large company with a lot of views. If you want to express them, it’s OK in moderation. It’s fine as long as you don’t go overboard. It’s not really an issue.”

It’s also not a problem at Turning Technologies in Youngstown, which employs about 150, or at the Lordstown General Motors complex, which employs more than 5,000.

YSU has a written policy for its nearly 2,000 workers. The policy states: “Employees are free to express political opinions; however, such expression cannot imply official university endorsement, sanction or action.”

“The university supports employees’ participation in the political process,” said Ron Cole, a YSU spokesman. “... As a university, we are an institution that is very supportive of the free exchange of ideas and that includes during a political campaign. We support that as long as it’s done in an appropriate way.”

One example of an inappropriate way, Cole said, is a giant banner on the side of a university building.

“We haven’t had any sort of problem with that before,” he said.

skolnick@vindy.com