Hundreds Of John Kerry Yard Signs Stolen In Fla.

“Nice people don’t steal or vandalize.”

There are few things in this world that I hate. I mean genuinely despise. Willfully ignorant people are one. Childish political theivery is another:

Pensacola resident Anne Bennett lost four Kerry signs from her front yard before putting out a homemade sign that read “Nice people don’t steal or vandalize.” She hung her latest sign from a pine tree limb 15 feet in the air.

“It’s like you don’t have a right to participate in the public debate unless you are in the majority, and that is not one of the principles on which our country was founded,” she said.

Northwest Florida is a Bible Belt region filled with military bases, veterans and Republican voters. In 2000, President George W. Bush beat Democrat Al Gore by better than a 2-1 margin.

Locally, I know for a fact that this is a problem, only vice versa. Republicans routinely have signs stolen from yards, vandalized, and torn down. Most recently, we had a number of complaints during the November 2003 election with Robert Stuber signs being stolen, trashed, and yards vandalized in the process (presumably as a means of telling the property owners what a GOP sign invites).

Vandalism on the part of political campaigns is cheap and stupid. It makes the person you are trying to help look bad, it makes the other guy look like a martyr, it motivates the people who you stole from (and trust me, it certainly riled up folks to work for Stuber in 2003), and in this case, it gets reported on in the press. I hope it’s a trend that continues.

Do everything you can for your candidate before Election Tuesday, but keep in mind that we are all Americans again the Wednesday afterwards. After all, you could be handing out hundreds of literature pieces for the effort of tearing down a handful of signs. . . and lit drops are more effective than signs anyhow.