For a brief moment, it seemed that even Diet Mountain Dew was going to become a wedge issue in the cultural wars. Instead, it may become a unifier.
Both the Republican and the Democratic candidates for vice president, it turns out, are fans of the soft drink. And in a race where so much attention has focused on heartland voters, it makes sense that a regional favorite has entered the conversation.
The Mountain Dew Moment started two weeks ago when the Republican, Senator JD Vance, told an audience in Middletown, Ohio: “Democrats say that it is racist to believe — well, they say it’s racist to do anything. I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today. I’m sure they’re going to call that racist, too. It’s good.”
On CNN’s “The Source” later that day, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky responded, “What was weird was him joking about racism today and then talking about Diet Mountain Dew. Who drinks Diet Mountain Dew?”
It turns out a lot of people do, including many of Governor Beshear’s constituents. Kentucky has among the highest per capita consumption of Mountain Dew in the United States. Mr. Beshear, a Democrat, quickly walked back the comments and apologized.
At a news conference the next day, he said, “So if you enjoy Diet Mountain Dew, you be you, we want to support you. And to Diet Mountain Dew, very sorry, didn’t mean to say negative things about you.”
After Mr. Walz was named on Tuesday as Kamala Harris’s running mate, he was also reported to be a devoted drinker of the same beverage — which in some ways complicates the cultural implications and in some ways clarifies them.
While politicians have long use food items to signal authenticity or down-to-earthness — think George Bush the elder with his pork rinds or Hillary Rodham Clinton’s purse stash of hot sauce — the Mountain Dew affinity seems to be genuine, more in line with Ronald Reagan’s love for jelly beans or Bill Clinton’s Big Mac habit.
That both Mr. Walz and Mr. Vance drink the Dew — albeit in diet form — is perhaps not surprising given their home states. Ohio and Minnesota are both in what has been called the Mountain Dew Belt, which runs from Appalachia and the Mid-South through the Midwest.
“The heartland is big Mountain Dew country,” said Duane Stanford, the editor and publisher of Beverage Digest magazine. “That’s kind of the core audience.”
Mountain Dew, in all its forms, ranks fifth in nationwide market share among soda brands, according to the market research firm Mintel, but it overperforms in that region, particularly among men in households that make less than $50,000 a year.
Some of that regional appeal may come from the drink’s origins. The generally accepted story is that the drink was first concocted by the brothers Barney and Aloysius Hartman as a mixer for bootleg Tennessee hooch — the phrase “mountain dew” being a folk term for moonshine. After some vagaries of ownership and exact recipe, the drink arrived at its current hard-to-define citrusy sweetness (orange juice is still the third ingredient in the full-sugar version), and the brand was acquired by PepsiCo in 1964. Today, the drink and its variations are sold in many countries.
Kaitlin Ceckowski, a researcher at Mintel, was not surprised at the shared beverage tastes of Senator Vance and Governor Walz. “These are men from the Midwest,” she said. “Extremely different people with different ideologies, but there are some demographic similarities there.” (The Vance campaign declined to comment; a spokesman for the Democratic candidates said he would respond later.)
Through the years, both organically and deliberately, the drink has retained some of those country-living associations.
“If you look at some of what, over the years, Mountain Dew attaches itself to when it comes to its marketing, a lot of times it is heavily influenced by country music — basically tapping into some of those same affinity groups — motocross, certain sports that are associated with the open land,” Mr. Stanford said.
Ms. Ceckowski pointed out that Mountain Dew advertises at NASCAR events and on ESPN, and the giveaway codes on its bottles can win people items like personal watercraft and off-road vehicles.
“Mountain Dew is just about having a good time,” she said. “It’s extremely unpretentious. It doesn’t boast any bold claims. It doesn’t claim to unite the world. It’s just soda.”
In fact, the brand’s latest ad campaign — which revives its classic slogan “Do the Dew” — features a longhaired 1970s rocker character called Mountain Dude.
“On the mountain, we’ve got a saying,” the Mountain Dude says in one commercial, “Get off your ass.”
That oomph is also part of the drink’s historic identity. A 12-ounce can of Diet Mountain Dew contains nearly 40 percent more caffeine than a can of regular Coke. And while the caffeine in colas was historically a byproduct of the production process, the caffeine in Mountain Dew has always been added.
Mr. Vance even cited the caffeine content as a draw in a Newsmax appearance, saying, “This is the good stuff here. High caffeine, low calorie.”
Mr. Stanford has a theory on that front, as regards the Dew habit of Mr. Walz, who was once a high-school teacher. Though he doesn’t have any data to support the notion, Mr. Stanford said that he has heard from many teachers that an afternoon soft drink is a daily ritual.
“If you’re a teacher,” he said, “and you get in the midafternoon, you’re looking for some kind of pick-me-up.”
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