By Jeremy Duda | Arizona Mirror
Homie wants your business, not your vote.
Teal signs featuring a dollar sign flanked by stars have sprouted up at Phoenix intersections promising “significant change” if people “Vote for Homie” for a Senate seat. Whether that seat is in the Arizona or U.S. Senate, the signs don’t say, since Homie is not, in fact, a candidate for anything.
Homie isn’t even a person.
Rather, Homie is a Utah-based real estate company.
PR man Jason Rose has used the campaign season for such marketing ploys in the past, first during the Phoenix mayoral election in 2011. A marketing scheme to promote Stingray Sushi involved Rose registering a political action committee with the Secretary of State to engage in “political speech” as a means to advertise for sushi. “We had legal advice that said 51 percent of the signs had to be devoted to political speech,” Rose told the Yellow Sheet Report.
The signs used clever phrases to tie sushi to the two mayoral candidates at the time, Greg Stanton and Wes Gullett. “While the signs had the Stingray logo on them … they were engaged in the election,” he said. Rose repeated the strategy in 2012 during the presidential election, which required registering a committee with the Federal Elections Commission. But Rose can’t take credit for the latest election-themed advertisement, and told our reporter he’s not involved with Homie’s effort.
