Kelly, who claimed to be against "the extreme Right, the extreme Left, and the extreme Middle," used these fake campaigns as excuses to hit the stump himself for voter registration campaigns, with the slogan "Pogo says: If you can't vote my way, vote anyway, but VOTE!" .
Perhaps the most famous example of the strip's satirical edge came into being on May 1, 1953, when Kelly introduced a friend of Mole's: a wildcat named "Simple J. Malarkey," an obvious caricature of Senator Joseph McCarthy.