Trucker Hats and Pom-Poms: How Selling Swag Is Affecting the 2016 US Elections

If you happen to be walking through the lobby of the Trump Tower in Manhattan and want to make a donation to the Donald Trump presidential campaign, you're in luck. Visitors to Trump's 58-story skyscraper can make a direct contribution in the lobby's gift shop, which is now selling "Make America Great Again" trucker hats and "Trump 2016" T-shirts.

"A lot of people are excited and want the merchandise for different reasons," said Amy Steinfeldt, the manager of the Trump Store. "It's been great to see the support for the campaign with the response to all the merchandise."

Any purchase of a T-shirt or mug is legally considered a donation to the campaign by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which is why anyone who buys Trump merchandise at the gift shop must sign a form saying they are a US citizen who is not purchasing a T-shirt on behalf of a foreign national or corporation, explained Steinfeldt.

It's little surprise that Trump is selling hats and T-shirts with his name on them in the lobby of a building named after him; guests in his hotels have long found even the bottled water in their rooms features Trump's name and likeness. But this year, many candidates are getting particularly creative with merchandise in order to bring in extra dollars, promote name recognition, and gain momentum.

Visitors to Jeb Bush's campaign site, for instance, can buy a guacamole bowl. "Jeb and [his wife] Columba love whipping up guacamole on Sunday Funday," the site says. The item is called the Guaca Bowle, and it costs $75.

Rand Paul's campaign, meanwhile, is selling something called Hillary's Hard Drive.

"Buyer beware," the site says, "this product has had heavy use and it currently is no longer working, but that doesn't mean it's not valuable to someone. Anyone?" The non-functional item also comes a "wiping cloth." There are, the site says, only 80 of the hard drives to be sold.

Hillary herself is selling a much-discussed Everyday Pantsuit Tee for $30. And to match his hats, the Trump campaign is selling "Make America Great Again" cheerleader pom-poms online for $10.

Center for Responsible Politics spokeswoman Viveca Novak says she has noticed a marked increase in the emphasis put on merchandise sales in the 2016 election compared to previous years. Merchandise, she says, offers an effective branding method for the campaign. A report put together by two philanthropic foundations after President Barack Obama's successful 2008 run cited his campaign's use of online merchandise sales as a particularly "brilliant" strategy to drum up excitement.

"The campaign extensively tested premiums (a small merchandise item) in association with a donation," the report said. "These premiums ranged from mugs to t-shirts to car magnets, and they proved to be very lucrative, according to new media staff."

Ten-dollar T-shirt sales may not be bankrolling candidates, but they do provide huge value to campaigns due to the fact that swag purchases are counted as individual small-dollar donations.

"There is a certain cache [for a candidate] that comes with showing broad support from a wide group of people rather than relying on large corporations," Novak said.

Campaigns are scrambling to increase online sales today in particular — it's the quarterly deadline for filing financial disclosure forms with the FEC. The campaign of Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders — "Caution: Contents may cause a serious Bern" coffee mugs are $15 on his campaign site — said it has received more than 1 million online contributions, which means he is outpacing both of Obama campaigns. Showing a great deal of small donations builds a candidate's momentum and makes him or her more attractive to larger donors.

That may explain why many campaign stores are offering flash online sales this week. The Clinton online store is giving shoppers a 15 percent discount if they buy today. Paul's Hillary Hard Drive has been marked down from its original price of $99.95 to a mere $59.95.

The majority of money in the 2016 presidential race is not coming from t-shirt sales, however. It's coming from Super PACs, which can spend unlimited amounts of money on a candidate but cannot legally coordinate with or fundraise for the campaigns themselves. What it means to "coordinate," however, is not well-defined.

Direct individual donations, which are capped at $2,700 dollars per election, is what candidates spend the most fundraising energy pursuing, and where lobbyists exert the most influence, said Nick Penniman, executive director of campaign finance-reform non-profit Issue One. If you are a lobbyist for a special interest group who wants face time with Bush, for instance, you're not going to donate to his Super PAC.

"You're going to want to go to the $2,700-a-plate dinner held by fundraisers on Jeb's behalf," Penniman said.

Even with the online discounts, the amount raised by small individual donations pales in comparison to the large donors for almost every candidate. For Trump and Bush, 2 percent and 3 percent of their funds respectively come from individuals donating less than $500 dollars. Clinton's campaign has received 17 percent of its funds from small individual donors. Sanders, who has refused to accept any Super PAC money, is the only candidate who has received a majority of his campaign dollars — nearly 70 percent — from small individual donations.

Follow Olivia Becker on Twitter:  @obecker928