What do Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Jeb Bush all have in common? A hat factory in Newark, New Jersey.
In 1992, Mitch Cahn quit his Wall Street job and bought a bankrupt baseball hat factory. He couldn’t compete with overseas manufacturers on cost, so he catered to a specific market: people who want their hats made in the United States. His customers include the military, progressive companies, and political candidates. Since 2004, Unionwear has made the promotional campaign hats for pretty much every Democratic presidential primary candidate—and for a bunch of the Republicans, too. In 2008, Cahn’s unionized workforce made the hats for both Obama and McCain.
Watch the video above to meet Cahn, take a tour of the Unionwear factory, and learn which political hat is outselling all the others in the 2016 campaign.
Read more of Slate’s coverage of the 2016 campaign.
Correction, Dec. 7, 2015: This video originally misidentified several years on a chart showing the decline of U.S. apparel manufacturing employees from 1989 to 2000. The video has been updated.
