Gore Family BBQ Pin

Some new national items found their way in my mailbox two weeks ago. I don't usually go out of my way to purchase items from other states, but these were convention and single day event related so I went for them.

I posted a few images on the APIC facebook page and got some responses. While they are fairly uncommon and even a rare one or two, because they are mostly Gore related items they do not set the hearts of collectors afire with need. Most were between $5 and $15 each. One pin did draw me to the lot a little more. It was this Gore Family BBQ pin from 1997.

I have found only two brief mentions of the 2nd Annual Gore Family BBQ from clippings in 1998, but nothing on the 1st Annual Gore Family BBQ, which is apparently where this pin is from. What was the purpose of this BBQ? Was it to help organize his partisans in Tennessee to keep them focused on 2000? Was it to raise money for local candidates? If you can find a newspaper article from the period, I would appreciate seeing it.

Gore items from 1996-2000 intrigue me the most of any Gore items. I have seen items promoting Gore for President in 2000 as early as 1997, on the heels of finishing the 1996 election Gore and supporters got to planning his 2000 effort. If you have any Gore 2000 items that can be traced to this time period please feel free to share them.

Recent Finds August

Thanks to my friend Carla Axtman, I have some wonderful new buttons to start researching. A quick look on this button for Charles Luebbert for State Senator didn't yield much.

What I did find was just two articles in the Eugene Register Guard about 17 years apart mentioning that Mr. Luebbert worked for Freightliner Inc. The first article (or job posting) was in 1965. The second was a story highlighting layoffs of 1,000 employees at Freightliner in Oregon during the recession of the early 1980s.

Another archive held papers from the Urban League of Portland from the early 1970s, where Mr. Luebbert was fairly active and even nominated to serve on the Board of Directors. On the list of names on the side of the letter head, I noticed the name of Carlos Rivera. He was a candidate for Congress in 1974.

Hopefully more will turn up about Mr. Luebbert. The button contains a union bug and candidate info on curl.

The second button that Carla gave me was this one with the slogan: 'I'm for CALVERT'

This pin is from the Grants Pass area of Oregon. Has committee info on the curl, so we have a great place to start looking for information.  On my first hit in the ole google news archives is this doozy:
"JOSEPHINE COMMISSONER RECALLED IN LIGHT BALLOTING" from August of 1979. Hopefully this will lead to something really interesting. The reasons the article gives that he was officially recalled are very cut and dry and also very indicative of the region today. They claimed he was"causing unnecessary expansion of county government", "voting for foolish county projects" and last but not least "building a political empire!"

Not much else besides the news of the recall. I will have to seek out local archives and do a little more digging. Two great mystery pins have started to have their mystery solved. Local buttons are always fun to get just for sake of learning about some of the wild stories in local government.