WASHINGTON—A high-profile House Ethics Committee hearing revealed Tuesday that a major political consulting firm single-handedly drove the historic Latino voters swing after replacing all campaign-trail ethnic food with a lukewarm, flavorless cornstarch slurry. Under intense questioning, political strategists admitted they believed authentic seasoning would alienate swing-state suburbs. The bizarre culinary directive ultimately alienated millions of voters instead.
The Honorable Raymond Vance: State your name and occupation for the record, please.
Rusty Calhoun: My name is Rusty Calhoun. I am the founder of Dads Against Bass, but for the last six months, I served as the Senior Coordinator of Culinary Outreach for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Mr. Vance: Mr. Calhoun, let us look at Exhibit C. This is a memo titled 'The De-Spicing of the Southwest.' Did you write this?
Mr. Calhoun: Yes, sir. I did. We realized that actual spices were causing our candidates to sweat under the high-definition television lights. We needed a uniform, off-white substance that represented stability. We settled on a food-grade, lukewarm cornstarch slurry.
Mr. Vance: And you served this to actual humans at community events?
Mr. Calhoun: We served it at every single rally. We called it 'The Unity Paste.' We believed it would appeal to everyone by offending absolutely no one. We even served it in a hollowed-out bell pepper to make it look festive.
Mr. Vance: But the Latino voters swing started the exact week you introduced the paste, did it not?
Mr. Calhoun: Correlation is not causation, sir. Though, in hindsight, the candidate calling cilantro 'the devil's soap' during his speech at the Phoenix community center probably did not help our numbers.
Mr. Vance: Is it true you also banned salt within fifty yards of the campaign bus?
Mr. Calhoun: We did. We felt that sodium was a gateway to flavor. Flavor leads to culinary passion, and passion leads to unpredictable voting patterns. We wanted a quiet, low-sodium electorate that preferred boiling things.
Mr. Vance: Mr. Calhoun, you literally replaced a historic mariachi band with a single man playing a wet cardboard box with a wooden spoon.
Mr. Calhoun: We felt the acoustic resonance of the box was more aligned with our fiscal message. At press time, our internal polling indicates that 98 percent of voters now associate our party exclusively with the taste of wet drywall.
