Columnist Susan Snyder: Capitalists are on the button

Friday, Aug. 13, 2004 | 8:28 a.m.

Those who didn't read any of the buttons David Mastos was selling at the John Kerry rally Tuesday probably thought the biggest joke of the evening was the Thomas & Mack Center's security checkpoint.

Honestly, trying to squeeze 15,000 people through four metal detectors was akin to squeezing the flesh of an entire watermelon through the eye of a darning needle. People actually fainted while waiting.

But thanks to Mastos and his co-workers, at least those swooning in 112-degree heat had cool buttons to wear.

"I'm on commission. Actually, I'm on vacation," Mastos said. "It's a working vacation. I get to see the countryside."

Behind him, a fellow pitchman prodded passersby to purchase a political T-shirt.

"Kerry-Edwards shirts! Good for eight years!"

And good for business. Mastos, the owner of Hot Diggity-Dog cafe in Sarasota, Fla., is buddies with a Florida-based political paraphernalia-maker who follows the campaign caravans with bags of buttons and bands of salespeople.

Like Deadheads setting up Shakedown Street, the group stakes out the sidewalks around places presidential candidates host rallies. They have buttons in traditional designs, along with a few not-so-reverent models.

One showed the Three Stooges with some more recent familiar faces and the names "Jr., Dick, Rummy," printed underneath them.

"My best line so far is someone came up and said, 'Five dollars? That's too much!' And I said, 'Yeah, but I got some good news. I just saved a bundle on my car insurance,' " Phil Phunn, another button-man, said.

Phunn, a Sarasota resident who also works as an event emcee and disc jockey, says he is a professional "ticket salesman." He sold buttons and political hoo-ha for Arnold Schwarzenegger but also buys and resells tickets for events such as high-profile concerts, the PGA Tour and even the Olympics.

"I leave a week from (Wednesday) for Athens," Phunn said.

For now, however, he's a button guy -- a nonpartisan one.

"We work both sides of the aisle," Phunn said. "I'm out here working. I'm an entrepreneur. You can even Google me, and find me there."

Did that and found a February article from The New Republic in which Phunn said he was a Howard Dean supporter until January, when he traveled to Iowa to sell Dean souvenirs and found he liked Kerry.

But he sold a bundle of pro-Bush goodies in Pennsylvania earlier this year and was among those who planned to hawk Bush buttons outside the president's Las Vegas appearance Thursday.

"This election is one of the most contentious in my memory," Phunn said.

And contentious is good for business, especially if the buttons for your guy are a little snotty about the other guy. Mastos said sales depend less on which party is doing the buying and more on when how the rally's mood strikes.

"It sells out best when it's over. We call it, 'The Big Blow-off,' " Mastos said. "You meet a lot of nice people and make a little money."

And he turned his attention back to his work.

"Hey, $15 for a Kerry bear and I'll throw in a button!"