Two sets of Republican entrepreneurs are hoping party loyalists will buy their ketchup and shun Heinz. They're in it for the cause - and the cash.
By COLETTE BANCROFT
Published August 3, 2004
Heinz ketchup
Bush Country ketchup
W ketchup
It's Heinz, hands down
In a highly unscientific but nonpartisan taste test, the "Democratic" ketchup won every vote but one.
First, your opinion of the war in Iraq could be discerned by what you called your fries. Now dunking those fries in ketchup is a political act.
Ketchup took on a partisan flavor when John Kerry emerged as the Democratic presidential candidate. Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, is the widow of John Heinz, scion of the family whose name is emblazoned on zillions of ketchup bottles.
A few months ago, two sets of Republican entrepreneurs, working separately in upstate New York and Washington, D.C., began to wonder how much of the profits from a bottle of Heinz ketchup might end up in the Kerry coffers. And they wondered how they could divert some of that condiment cash to the Republican cause - and into their pockets.
Thus were born not one but two Republican ketchups: Bush Country ketchup and W ketchup.
Bush Country is "making sure Kerry won't ketchup to Dubya!" according to its label, which features a cartoon of an elephant cheerily stomping the Massachusetts senator. W ketchup's Web site asks, "You don't support Democrats. Why should your ketchup?"
Competitive capitalism is in the Republican spirit, of course. But the ketchup contest is turning into a food fight as the two companies snipe at each other over which is truly conservative.
Bush Country ketchup was founded by Patrick Spero and Christopher Cylke, a pair of Republican political activists in Washington.
Cylke is a staffer on the House Judiciary Committee, Spero a volunteer press secretary for congressional candidate Mike Jones of Massachusetts.
They formed their company in February and launched Bush Country on April 25. W ketchup launched June 11. Spero says, "They blatantly copied our idea."
But what really riles him, he says, is that W ketchup's founders "are shamelessly capitalizing on George Bush's middle initial while at the same time they refuse to offer any expression of support for the president on their Web page or product." Bush Country, he points out, is proudly dedicated to keeping Bush in the White House.
The "W" in W ketchup, Spero says, doesn't even stand for Dubya. It stands for Washington - and it's not clear whether that's George Washington or Washington, D.C.
"These guys should get out of the ketchup business and start making syrup," Spero says. "It will go perfectly with all the waffling they do."
W ketchup was created by a group of 15 investors, who maintain they came up with the idea independently of Bush Country. The W ketchup company's chief executive is Dan Oliver, a former corporate lawyer in New York City. "But I thought there might be more opportunity in ketchup, so I left my job and started the company," he says.
As for W ketchup's conservative credibility, Oliver says his first job, at age 15, was as a volunteer for Jack Kemp's 1988 presidential campaign.
He says, "The other investors are active in the Republican Party and the conservative movement, so I'll let you guess which candidate we support.
"We have received numerous comments asking that we, and/or the bottle, be more explicit about who we support, but in an age of rancorous partisanship, we think subtlety is a lot more effective."
The W Ketchup Web site doesn't mention Bush, although it features a salute to the late President Ronald Reagan.
The Bush Country ketchup site lauds Bush's leadership and urges voters to "do your part in November to ensure that America remains Bush Country."
Spero says Bush Country donates 15 percent of its proceeds to Republican Town Committees and "deals with local groups to maximize their profitability" from fundraisers "dedicated to President Bush, the Republican Party or conservative causes."
W ketchup donates 5 percent of its proceeds to the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund. The Freedom Alliance was founded by Lt. Col. Oliver North, Iran-Contra schemer turned conservative commentator, and the fund provides scholarships for the children of military personnel killed or disabled in the line of duty.
Oliver says W ketchup's founders heard about the fund because of conservative pundit Sean Hannity's involvement in it. "We chose it because it needs the help and we thought it was truly a cause all Americans should support," he says.
Conservative one-upmanship aside, both companies are shipping a lot of sauce. Spero estimates his company has sold about 3,600 bottles of Bush Country ketchup and says he has another couple of tons of it in his garage. Oliver says about 65,000 bottles of W ketchup have been sold.
Republicans have a history with ketchup. In 1981, during the Reagan administration, a $1-billion cut in funding for children's nutrition led the U.S. Department of Agriculture to look for ways to save money on subsidized lunch programs in schools.
One suggestion was to reclassify ketchup as a vegetable, so fries with a squirt of the red stuff would have counted as two servings of veggies. The proposal created such an uproar that it was never put into effect.
Bush Country and W ketchups are sold mainly online and boast that they're bottled in the United States and made with American-grown ingredients.
A 13-ounce bottle of Bush Country ketchup goes for $5.99 plus shipping at www.bushcountryketchup.com Despite its name, it's bottled in Auburn, Calif., northeast of San Francisco, and shipped from East Sandwich, Mass., neither of which sounds much like Bush country.
W ketchup sells a minimum order of four 13-ounce bottles for $12, plus shipping, at www.wketchup.com It really does come from Bush country: It ships from Stratford, Conn., just a few miles down the coast from Bush's birthplace, New Haven.
At a St. Petersburg Publix last week, a 14-ounce bottle of Heinz (made in Pittsburgh) was priced at $1.29.
Ketchup is not the only culinary political battleground. Irked by the left-leaning politics of the founders of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, conservative lobbyist Richard Lessner and two partners created Star Spangled Ice Cream in 2003.
Flavors include I Hate the French Vanilla, Choc and Awe, Rushmallow and Gun Nut. The last, a coconut-almond-chocolate chip combo, is endorsed by rock guitarist-weapons enthusiast Ted Nugent on the company Web site, www.starspangledicecream.com
The minimum order of four quarts of the super-premium ice cream goes for the major-political-donors-only price of $76 plus shipping.
The company donates 10 percent of proceeds to the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund, the same one that benefits from W ketchup sales. One dollar from the sale of each quart of Gun Nut goes to the Gun Owners Foundation Gun Safety Project.
The rest of the profits, of course, go to the folks who came up with the idea, as is the case with both Republican ketchups. They're raising funds for conservative causes, but they're mainly making money for entrepreneurs and investors.
The conservative ketchup guys say the point is that none of the profit from their condiment goes to liberal causes via Teresa Heinz Kerry.
Just how much of the profits from a dollop of Heinz ketchup could find its way into Democratic coffers isn't clear, but claims like the one on the W ketchup Web site that the Heinz Co. "donates four percent of its profits to liberal causes" aren't exactly accurate.
According to the H.J. Heinz Co. Web site, Heinz is a publicly owned company, with shareholders of every political stripe.
Put together, the shares owned by Teresa Heinz Kerry, all other members of the Heinz family and several Heinz family philanthropic trusts add up to less than 4 percent of total shares in the company.
Money family members receive from those shares isn't "donated," it's profit on investment, a concept any Republican can understand.
Neither Heinz Kerry nor any member of her family is involved in the company's management or board, and the Heinz Co. declares itself a nonpartisan organization.
That's not to say Heinz Kerry doesn't have money to spend on her husband's presidential bid. She inherited a fortune when her first husband, Republican Sen. John Heinz, died in a 1991 plane crash.
Her reported income in 2003, mostly from investments, was more than $5-million, and her personal wealth has been estimated at anywhere from $550-million to $3-billion. (Last year, Bush disclosed income of about $1-million and assets estimated at between $9-million and $22-million.) But her investments are diversified; the money isn't all coming out of the ketchup bottle.
It's a pretty safe bet, though, that if there's a barbecue at one of the Kerry homes, the ketchup on the table will be Heinz.
But what kind of ketchup do they serve at the Bush White House?
Sorry, that's an undisclosed condiment. Taylor Gross of the White House media relations office says, "We don't release that information because we don't want to advertise for anybody."
