Sack Politicians, Millionaire Urges

When it comes to Tuesday’s election, John Roscoe has only this to say: Bag it.

The millionaire owner of a Bay Area-based chain of discount stores is distributing hundreds of thousands of grocery sacks printed with his opinion of the American political system and its candidates for office.

“Don’t Vote, It Only Encourages Them,” reads a large blue headline across one side of the paper bags. On the other side, an editorial message urges people to “abstain from beans,” in reference to the ancient Greek voting method of casting colored beans into a container.

Roscoe’s grocery bags may not be what political consultants mean by media packaging, but they are his way of telling shoppers at 97 Northern California Food & Liquor stores that they should stay home next Tuesday.

“Voting doesn’t improve a situation,” continues the text on the bags, 600,000 of which have been printed since mid-October. “By voting you allow a politician to do whatever he wants to do. . . . If you want good things to happen, you’d better do it yourself.”

Some shoppers said they thought that the message was a joke. But Secretary of State March Fong Eu, the California League of Women Voters and various political campaign workers--not to mention a few of Roscoe’s own employees--are not amused.

Earlier this week, Eu took the unusual step of writing Roscoe personally to condemn his acts.

“I shudder to think what our country would be like if everybody thought as you did,” Eu said in a four-page letter that also quoted the Greek playwright Aeschylus and Winston Churchill in defense of representative democracy.

California League of Women Voters President Carol Federighi said she is “rather appalled” at Roscoe’s grocery-bag politics.

“Voting is the most basic of civic responsibilities,” Federighi said. “It’s irresponsible to say, ‘Don’t vote.’ You don’t really have the right to complain about government if you don’t take the opportunity and the time to cast a vote.”

Roscoe, for his part, said he believes that representative government is wrong.

“I believe in capitalistic acts between consenting adults,” he said. “We are harassed by government day in and day out. . . . The smaller number of people who vote, maybe (politicians) will get the idea that less people want to be told what to do.”

But a Food & Liquor checkout clerk, Chris Foshee of Fresno, said it is the store employees themselves who are being unfairly told what to do--by Roscoe.

“He is exercising his First Amendment rights at the expense of the employees by forcing them to hand out his opinion,” Foshee said.

Another Food & Liquor employee, who asked that her name not be used, said all of her fellow workers resent having to distribute the bags but fear that if they complain, they will lose their jobs.

Mike O. Kelly, a bartender from San Francisco who shops at this city’s sole Food & Liquor store on a daily basis, said he found the message very disturbing.

“I looked at that bag, and I couldn’t believe what I was reading,” he said. “It’s unpatriotic.”

Carol Gelardi, another San Francisco resident, said Roscoe’s political messages have convinced her not to shop at the store except in an emergency.

But Roscoe said he will continue using the bags, and he said they have been well received.

“I think it has been a real worthwhile campaign,” he said. “Business is up.”