The fall and rise of the campaign button

Sam Morris

Campaign buttons have made a strong comeback in this presidential election year. This collection was on display at the American Political Items Collectors conference.

By Brendan Buhler (contact)

Friday, Aug. 15, 2008 | 2 a.m.

For some, political buttons are not items to toss aside after a candidate’s defeat. They are small history lessons.

The die-hards who collect these buttons are amateur historians and among them, Robert Fratkin is regarded as an expert on the medium, from its glory to its senescence.

Fratkin, a portfolio manager for Smith Barney, is the collectors’ point man for spotting reproductions and forgeries on eBay. Ask a collector who could settle a button bar bet and Fratkin’s name comes up.

Fratkin was at the Riviera last week with 250 of the 3,000 members of the American Political Items Collectors. In a year when the political button is making an enormous comeback, Fratkin shared his thoughts about what this bit of Americana tells us about ourselves.

The button was once the king of political campaigns, but in recent decades it has been more like a constitutional monarch — respected but quaint.

A century ago, buttons were smaller, about the size of a bottle cap, and worn on the lapel. People had to get close to you to read them and they were an invitation to talk politics, Fratkin said.

The long decline of the button started with air conditioning and TV. Instead of spending time outside talking with their neighbors, people moved inside, he said. They also developed a larger sense of personal space. It was no longer acceptable to come up and grab a button on someone’s lapel.

The worst blow came in 1972, when Richard Nixon’s campaign decided money spent on buttons could be better spent on TV ads.

This year, however, buttons are making a comeback. Fratkin attributes it in large part to Barack Obama’s likely status as the first black nominee. His candidacy is history and people want to hold it in their hands.

Outside a room at the Riviera, a half-dozen hobbyists waited for a meeting of pro-Obama collectors to start. They exchanged wild rumors about how much memorabilia there is. They joked about the paucity of McCain buttons. There’ve been, what, three?

If only their room would free up so they could start the meeting.

“Why don’t we just take the McCain room?” said one man, causing some men to peer into the space set aside for the Republican candidate’s collectors.

One man was inside.

He was Carl Toepel, a retired school principal from Wisconsin, vice president of the Bush Family Collectors chapter and a McCain delegate to this summer’s Republican National Convention. He’s proud to note that the cities he will represent include Ripon, birthplace of the Republican Party.

Soon another man walked in, Alan Borg from Glenview, Ill. Borg plans to vote for McCain, but he soon left to join the Obama collectors. He suggested that McCain buttons may become rare, the 21st-century equivalent of those touting James Cox, who lost in a landslide to Warren Harding.

In the Obama room, Cary Jung, organizer of a chapter of Obama collectors, announced that Tigereye, the nation’s premier button maker, has 5,000 Obama designs.

The crowd gasped.

“Yeah, but the buttons don’t vote,” said Stanley Campbell of Rockford, Ill. “Weird farmers in western Iowa vote.”