Doubling down on both the political and business fronts, Penzeys Spices has launched an unusual promotion that, according to chief executive Bill Penzey, had raised $435,000 as of late Tuesday afternoon for Facebook ads urging the impeachment of President Donald Trump.

Since Sunday morning, the Wauwatosa-based firm has been channeling all the revenue generated by online sales to new customers into the pro-impeachment drive spearheaded by Bill Penzey, who for some time has been vocal about his political views.

The effort originally was to end Monday night, but on Tuesday the company tweeted that it would continue the promotion through the day.

In dedicating the revenue to promoting the impeachment campaign on Facebook, the company will forgo profit on the sales and absorb the cost of the spices, Penzey said in an interview. The move is sure to entrench him and his company still more deeply in the country's political battlefields — terrain businesses generally try to avoid.

Penzey, though, finds it impossible to separate his politics from his business, and believes the attention his unusual stance is attracting can ultimately boost the Penzeys brand and lead to increased sales.

“How do you get to be Miller Brewing?" Penzey asked rhetorically. "How do you get to be Harley-Davidson? And I think that us doing our thing is us getting to be Penzeys Spices.”

"Everything is a brand," he said. "And how do some of them, by being who they are, become something that's sort of universal? And I think we've taken a big step in that direction the last few years."

Penzeys drew notice last week with a report that it had spent $92,000 on a pro-impeachment Facebook post. In the wake of the reaction to the move, Penzey decided to earmark two days' worth of revenue from new online customers for further Facebook spending.

The original $92,000 Facebook ad spending on impeachment was second only to the $729,000 spent by the Trump campaign during the week of Sept. 29-Oct. 5, according to data compiled by Bully Pulpit Interactive.

That was hardly the first time Bill Penzey has spent big money to broadcast his views on Facebook on matters unrelated to business.

The social media platform, stung by criticism that it allowed unverified ads that could have affected the 2016 election, has set up a searchable library with data on all ads about social issues, elections or politics that have run since May 2018.

Since then, spending on such ads by Penzeys Spices has totaled more than $2.3 million — enough to rank the firm among the top 30 spenders, and ahead of such presidential candidates as Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar.

Organizations connected to Trump are easily the biggest spenders, at about $20 million.

Bill Penzey unveiled his firm's new effort Sunday morning on Facebook, saying that the post last week had prompted more than 50,000 comments and "eclipsed anything we had ever done."

"The president is trying to use Facebook to turn America against his removal from office," Penzey wrote. "Together we can offset his message and maybe even overcome it."

In an atmosphere of pronounced partisanship, that also could cost Penzeys customers — and money. Penzey, for his part, believes the net effect will be positive for the business.

"Probably we’ll pick up 1% more customers and we’ll lose a half-percent," he said.

"And to those cheesed off at us for doing this," he wrote in an email late Tuesday afternoon, "I am sorry but you need this more than anyone. ... I get that you might have to quit us for a while. But one day you will see this man for what in your heart you already know him to be."

Judging from Penzey's estimates, the effort has attracted several thousand new customers. On Monday, he estimated that about 5,500 people had accounted for the $299,000 in new sales to that point.

Beyond its online business, Penzeys Spices has 62 stores, according to its website.

Contact Rick Romell at (414) 224-2130 or rick.romell@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @RickRomell.