Obama Store Stocked for Black Friday: Goods Entirely ‘Made in USA’
CHICAGO – This Black Friday, count President Obama’s re-election campaign as one “retailer” fully stocked and hungry for a slice of the holiday shopping pie.
A glimpse inside the campaign store at headquarters found shelves loaded with the traditional array of screen print T-shirts, buttons, stickers and yard signs.
But there’s also plenty of non-traditional “ swag” to accompany what aides bill as a non-traditional campaign.
New arrivals include Obama-Biden branded yoga pants, basketball jerseys, golf divot tools, martini glasses, cutting boards, grill spatulas and cufflinks.
Bo Obama, the first family’s pet Portuguese Water Dog, makes a cameo appearance on a button.
Vice President Joe Biden’s face is emblazoned on a coffee mug titled “Cup of Joe.”
And a facsimile of the president’s birth certificate appears both on “Made in the U.S.A.” T-shirts and coffee mugs, poking fun at the conspiracy theorists who insist Obama was born abroad.
Campaign officials won’t reveal which are the hottest selling items, or how much revenue the sales have raised.
One thing they will say for certain is that everything on the shelves was manufactured on U.S. soil.
“If a product isn’t made here, we won’t brand it and sell it,” a campaign official said, adding that staff members have actually vetted some factories to ensure materials are made or assembled in America.
Not all the 2012 presidential candidates can make the same claim. A number of the Republican contenders have hawked goods made overseas.