Fun With Signs - Catch a Vandal

I have been getting a rash of complaints about signs being cut, stolen, damaged, etc. Obviously that kind of crap happens all the time, but more so in this election than in past it seems.

So...if you have a picture of video footage of someone doing it, send it to me and I will post it. I travel with my camera all the time, so I am ready to film if I catch someone.

Signs are expensive and doing that is just little league campaigning.

Now, time for some fun with signs. Actually, one isn't fun. Its mind-blowingly stupid. Yes, I think I just made that word up, but its so stupid, I almost couldn't believe it really happened. (The geniuses in Austin strike again!)

Here is a sign of Victor Flores. A reader snapped the photo and sent it to me. As you can see, missing the disclaimer at the bottom. My reader commented, "..he's been around long enough for him to know..."

The next one is of Hector Enriquez' ad in a print publication. He's missing the word "for" which makes the sing represent him as the incumbent state representative, which he is not. Another reader submitted this one.

And finally, the award for the biggest bone-head, slap-yourself-in-the-forehead-and-say-wtf-who-the-hell-is-running-that-campaign? for signs goes to...the Mary Gonzalez campaign.

I'm guessing this was another genius move out of Austin, but her entire campaign is to blame for this one. One assumes that when a logo is being developed, that it has to go through multiple levels of approval before it is approved. So a crap load of people, including the candidate, totally dropped the ball on this one and deserves it 100% if people point and laugh (like the big kid on the Simpsons).

The put who she is, what party she is from and what office she is running for...except they didn't put what District!!!!

Who what the freakin' genius who thought that was a good idea. Its totally lazy to just say, well, they are only going to be used in the district, so we won't need to put the district number (dumb jock voice). Even if they were only used in the district, which they weren't because I took this picture personally and it was out of the district, who the hell doesn't put the district on their sign?

Before you people start to try to downplay this one, understand a couple of things. Number one, I think there might actually be a legal requirement that the specific office a candidate is seeking is listed on the sign. I don't think State Representative is good enough to satisfy a legal requirement, if there is one. Seems to me you have have to state which State Rep office you are pursuing.

Aside from that, it just makes good campaign sense to include it. I'm pretty sure that is in Campaigning for Dummies.


But the more practical reason is because you want to educate voters that see your signs. They don't know what district they are in usually. They are even LESS likely to know that in a redistricting year.

I seriously can't get over the fact that a room, probably a couple of rooms-full of fancy high-priced consultants in Austin and El Paso actually thought leaving out the district number in a redistricting year made any sense.

One final note on signs. I was checking out signs down in the valley today and I noticed a couple of things about quality. Tony San Roman just started putting up signs, but they are pretty bad quality. the disclaimer is really blurred because of the paint and some of them were cut funny.

Rudy Loya was the first candidate to get signs up. You can only see it if you get really close to the sign, but whoever tried to crop out the background of the photo used on the sign did a piss-poor job. You can see blue parts of the other background. But you have to be really cose to notice it.