There are plenty of hot-button issues this campaign season - but not many actual campaign buttons.
Once a staple of political races, candidates are producing fewer buttons, opting instead for cheaper stickers - to save money for TV ads.
"A candidate used to call and say they wanted 5,000 buttons. Now, if they call at all, maybe they want 1,000," moaned Mort Berkowitz of Bold Concepts, a button maker in Times Square.
Collectors say it's a mistake, citing fewer young people going into the hobby and less American history memorabilia.
"Long after the candidates are dead, the buttons tell the story of the campaign," said Mark Evans of the American Political Items Collectors.
He's said his membership - which includes former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter - is graying, and there aren't many people under age 25 signing up.
"We notice kids don't get involved in the hobby as much," he said.
Button enthusiasts have seen a steady drop since the late 1980s, but said they suffered a big blow about five years ago when campaigns started turning to the Internet and social media - like Twitter and Facebook - to reach voters.
Candidates like Andrew Cuomo have gone with handing out stickers over buttons. McNamee/Getty
"When you go to events, people have stickers. Even at the Democratic state convention there was a small number of buttons instead of the large bowls of them at old conventions," said Democratic strategist George Arzt, an avid collector who has worked on local campaigns for the last 40 years.
Democratic State Committeewoman, and self-described "button maven," Trudy Mason counts more than 100 buttons from Mario Cuomo's four campaigns for governor.
By comparison, she estimates, his son, Andrew Cuomo, who is running for governor this year, has produced less than 10.
"A button stays with you forever. A sticker pulls your clothes and falls off. It's absolutely wrong,'" said Mason.
Campaigns defend stickers as portable, cheaper to produce and easy to slap on clothes. They say buttons don't have the clout they used to.
"When I started doing campaigns in the 80s, you'd better have a button and you saw them everywhere. Now, you rarely see them," said Mark Benoit, a Democratic consultant currently working on Controller Thomas DiNapoli's re-election campaign.
That doesn't make it easy for button-lovers.
"I'm sorry they are going by the wayside," Arzt said.
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