The Ballot Box, the Bread Box and the Button

If anyone still played that old kids’ game of “button, button, button, who’s got the button?” Dan Duncan, president of the Northern Virginia Central Labor Council, would win hands down. Duncan, one of those folks born with an oversized I-love-politics gene and, in the words of Hubert Humphrey, a “happy warrior” in election season, has a political campaign button collection of more than 2,000, dating from the 1890s to this year’s battle.  

Many of those buttons—including union-endorsed candidate buttons from the 20th and 21st centuries—are now on display in the lobby at the AFL-CIO headquarters. If you’re in town, be sure to drop by. Let Dan tell you more.     

For a political junkie, collecting presidential campaign pins is a wonderful hobby. You learn history. You see how issues unfold over the years. They also can be a heck of a lot more expensive—and harder to find—than baseball cards.

The first button in my collection is one I wore in the fall of 1960 when my mother took my sisters and me up to Euclid Avenue in an eastern suburb of Cleveland to see Jack Kennedy drive by in a motorcade. Through the many moves our family made that decade, I kept that button safely in a sock drawer. Today, I have more than 2,000 different presidential buttons going back to 1896, the first year buttons came on the scene.

Growing up in Tennessee and working in my congressman’s campaigns, I  have, of course, a great many Al Gore buttons. During his 2000 run for the presidency, my union brothers and sisters who knew of my connection to Gore provided me with a great many of their unions’ “Gore for President” buttons. I now have more than 400 different ones for him alone.

There are so many great pins, and picking a favorite is tough. I remember being excited when I discovered I could afford my first Eugene V. Debs button; finding a 1904 Alton Parker picture pin for $10 among a box of old trinkets at a flea market; finally obtaining a 1952 Bill Mauldin-drawn button of his World War II-era GI stating “I Like Stevenson”; and my favorite humorous one I found after the death of the former president, “Nixon in 2000: He’s Not As Stiff As Gore.”

Almost all buttons prior to 1980 were union made. In fact, collectors look for the union bug as one sign of authenticity. The Reagan campaign broke away from using the union button producers and the bug. But, since then, Democratic candidates and some independents continue to look for and use the union label.

Starting a collection is as easy as going to a campaign office and getting your first pin. Collections may feature a favorite candidate, a particular era, an important cause or a vital group. About 20 percent of my varied collection is labor related. (And those labor-specific pins feature Democratic, Republican and Third Party candidates.) You can start a substantial collection for less than $50. However, picture buttons for the 1920 and 1924 Democratic candidates are the rarest and may fetch more than $50,000 when made available through auctions.

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