According to Marsha Litke, this is a slow election year.
As one of only a handful of makers of campaign buttons in California, Litke is in a unique position to know such things.
From her ramshackle shop in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, Litke, her sister and mother make buttons for candidates, advertisers and promoters of everything from high school spaghetti feeds to the state fair to presidential candidates.
In 1984, when public interest was high, according to Litke, they printed up six different buttons for Walter F. Mondale before the San Francisco convention–pairing the Democratic candidate with rumored potential running mates Geraldine Ferraro, Dianne Feinstein and others.
This year, only a trickle of orders have come in for Dukakis buttons, and only one Republican convention souvenir hawker ordered Bush buttons.
For Litke, becoming a political barometer is one of the perks of being a button maker.
Litke’s parents, who owned a print shop in San Francisco, got their first order in 1966 for campaign buttons for then-gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan. Eager to please, they bought out two local button manufacturers and Button Works Inc. was born.
Button Was a Flop
In 1970, Litke’s parents retired to Nevada City, bringing the button business with them as a novelty.
Today, buttons line the walls of the shop, where hundreds are on permanent display–”and those are just from the first few years,” says Litke’s mother, Marion Rodman. All day long, customers poke through bins of buttons.
There are Zodiac signs and bicentennial buttons, buttons proclaiming “I’m OK–You’re OK” and “Keep on Truckin’,” photo buttons and one of the all-time flops, President Gerald R. Ford’s WIN button, part of his campaign to Whip Inflation Now.
More buttons are stashed in boxes on floor-to-ceiling shelves in the basement, and the most valuable are stored in a safe, placed there by her father, who died in 1981.
But Litke is hardly the button hound that her father was.
“Dad liked to stand around and yak about buttons and horse trade,” says Litke, who doesn’t.
In fact, she’s not really sure what’s in the safe, and she regularly disappoints collectors who stop by to hob-nob, trade and barter.
About the only thing that Litke seems to get a kick out of is watching the trends.
These days, the peace sign is making a comeback among 13- and 14-year-olds who “act like it’s the first time they’ve seen it,” she says.
Clark Gable and Sophia Loren should be so lucky. “Kids look at them now and say, ‘Who is that?’ ” says Litke, rolling her eyes.
The most popular political buttons are John F. Kennedy keepsakes.
“The Nixon ones are kind of a joke now,” Litke says. “They faded away for awhile, but they’re coming back now. Carter is not popular.”
Not a Union Shop
A 6-inch button sitting atop a display case of old campaign buttons proclaims the official Button Works philosophy: “I don’t care who wins . . . I just make buttons.”
But some candidates care who makes the buttons. Many Democrats won’t contract with the Button Works because it’s a non-union shop. Although Republicans don’t seem to feel similarly compelled to support organized labor, it doesn’t always matter, because many customers are vendors rather than candidates or party officials.
Political buttons are fun, Litke says, but the orders come too few and far between to be the bread and butter of the operation.
“It’s the showy part that people like to look at . . . but politicians wait until the last minute and they want all their buttons now,” says Litke, who has learned to ask for cash up front before filling an order–for anyone.
A good-sized order is for 150,000 buttons, but nothing has come close to the popularity of the happy face button, which Litke’s father claimed to have created. Of course, all good things must come to an end, and it wasn’t too long before the happy face started frowning. Or wearing goofy glasses. Or braces.
That didn’t bother the button makers, though. They’ll print anything–almost. Only two buttons have ever been refused, both for bad taste. One had Nazi overtones, Litke says, and the other was a Mondale-Ferraro button with an off-color reference.