Many or even most corporations donate to political parties and individual candidates, but few are as blatant in their support as Spirit Airlines.

The discount carrier has been “naming” its sales the way tropical storms and hurricanes are named, and the letter J sale has been named Jeb. Jeb Bush, governor of Florida and the brother of the president, is reportedly on the Republican Party’s short list of candidates for president, and Spirit’s “Jeb 2008″ imagery in the Spirit ad riffs off the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign iconography.

What an unbelievably boneheaded move.

Sure, this will garner some publicity, and all press is good press, right? Maybe not. For starters, most companies try to keep their political contributions out of customers’ sight, out of fear of alienating a clientele. But also, did any lawyers actually go over this ad? Will the ad spend be calculated as a donation to Jeb’s campaign? Donations need to be reported to state and federal regulators, and this could easily be interpreted as a campaign contribution. Enjoy your legal bills, Spirit!

Maybe Spirit was just upset that they weren’t included in BuyBlue.org’s list of airlines. The BuyBlue website categorizes companies of all industries according to their political donations, as well as issues such as labor practices, environmentalism, etc. These latter issues are more contentious, but the political donations data are fairly straightforward. (For international readers: blue = Democratic Party, red = Republican Party.)

Regardless of your politics, it’s interesting to check out BuyBlue to see how your “favorite” corporations have behaved. There is to my knowledge no “BuyRed” site, but the site lists data for both blue and red companies — so draw your own conclusions from the data. (Click for BuyBlue lists for hotels, airlines, and an alphabetical list of all tracked companies across industries.)

Via Jaunted.