‘Schiffective’: Adam Schiff’s Bonkers Campaign Merchandise

Right now, Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) is currently in a tight spot. He and Congresswoman Katie Porter (D-CA) are virtually neck-to-neck in polls for the 2024 Senate race. While he does lead by a wide margin in fundraising, that doesn’t seem to be moving the polling needle very much. So, just like any campaign needing a boost, he decided to go out there, campaign in some new areas, look for ways to grab some support from undecideds and the Porter camp, and continued fundraising for the likely to be tough fall and winter campaign months.

Oh, and his campaign also went completely insane on merchandise.

It’s not like political campaigns never have enough amusing political campaign merchandise My personal favorite is something Grandpa got in 1964 for the Barry Goldwater campaign – soap that was a golden color that made water the same color. A little bit crazy? Yes, but also practical and memorable.

Instead of going the fun route though, Schiff decided to make a play on words with his name and highlight his recent censureship in the House. And this week, he introduced the word to, sigh, Schiffective.

What is Schiffective you ask? The answer is damned if I know, but according to some of his merchandise it means “Successful in getting things done and consistently delivering intended results.”

Well, if he intended to confuse people and wanted to be successful in being mocked, I guess it worked. Anyway, here are some of his highlights. And note, all of these also have tote bag, mug, and other merchandise attached to the image, but for clarity sake, I went with the t-shirt with the image:

Schiffective

I asked a friend of mine who is a graphic designer what they thought of this, and they texted back almost immediately, “Amateur hour” and “This was slapped together in like 2 minutes.”

And honestly, it looks like that. The font is barely just above comic sans, the play-on with a dictionary definition is off target, and the picture is unintentionally hilarious. From the desktop computer from the 1990s, to a houseplant in the back that obviously gets no sun to his clearly defined widows peak, to Schiff, if you zoom in on the image, appearing to look at his finger make this just confusing. He’s outdated here, and that is something you don’t want in a politician.

It’s vintage Adam Schiff! Who wouldn’t want a shirt with a young Adam Schiff on it? But, unlike the Schiffective shirt above, that was at least trying to do something clever, this is just….young Adam Schiff with a 70s style font. I don’t know who this is intended for, and I kind of don’t want to.

This one doesn’t need much explanation – This is capitalizing off of his recent censure and trying to show the some sort of solidarity against it. But it would be funny if Schiff wears this next time he is facing censure in the House.

Ignoring the wordplay here, what is this unhealthy obsession with showing young Adam Schiff in everything? This is just another baffling choice of an odd, off-putting picture, quick joke tagline, and just awful visual representation. Most campaigns tend to stick to one or two shirts with a nice logo of the candidates name, color scheme, and maybe a slogan on there. Schiff has that, but decided to branch out with this.

I really don’t mean to pick on Schiff for all this. Candidates in every party can have awful shirts and things like this. But Schiff is just putting so much out now. Speaking of which…

That is another product Schiff is selling. At this point I should mention again that this is not from a parody site like the Onion. Schiff’s campaign is selling all of this. At least with this one he was smart enough not to have his name attached to it.

“These, and the other things on his site, are just not that great, and don’t look like they are for a serious candidate,” explained Pasadena-based graphic designer Ellen Soto to the Globe on Thursday. “Any designer would have said no to most of the things he is offering. The shirts that simply say “Adam Schiff for Senate” are actually pretty sharp. But others either have confusing color schemes, bad graphics, bad images, or other things that I and others would have flagged immediately.

“When people do stuff of this quality, it’s usually for a cash-grab or to quickly bring in money off of something the public will forget soon. And look at how many things mention ‘censure’ or ‘fillibuster’ there. It just doesn’t look that great.

“I don’t know who would buy a lot of these or accept them as gifts.”