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City Beat
Purloined lawn signs 'dark' side of election
Most candidates say sign-crime is price of politics
By Chantal Lamers
Since election time has rolled around in District 6, a certain type of petty crime has been on the rise. Candidates throughout the district have been receiving reports of thieves stealing campaign signs from supporters' lawns.
Five of the six candidates up for Vice Mayor Frank Fiscalini's San Jose City Council seat have been planting signs on lawns throughout the Willow Glen and Rosegarden neighborhoods. At $3 a pop, the cost of replacing signs can get expensive. Candidates say sign crime is all part of playing the politics game, but they're a little surprised at the boldness of some of the thieves.
Candidate Kris Cunningham had one supporter call her and report a theft during the afternoon. The caller told Cunningham a car stopped in front of her home, and a child jumped out and grabbed the sign off the lawn. With the child safely back in the passenger seat, the getaway car drove off--all in broad daylight.
"I've had some people jump in the car and try to track down thieves," Cunningham says.
After one of Cunningham's supporters had two lawn signs stolen, the woman took it upon herself to make sure a third wasn't taken. "One person sat in the bushes and watched from there until after midnight," she says. The supporter hoped to catch the two-time thief, but got cold and went inside.
Council hopeful Ken Yeager has had signs stolen, too. "The sign in front of my house was taken," Yeager says. "I was out late to an event one night, woke up the next morning and it was gone."
Like most others, Yeager's campaign team gets plenty of missing sign calls, and he even received a call that a sign hadn't been stolen, but torn up. "For whatever reason, it's not all that uncommon," Yeager says. "You move on and don't let it bother you."
Mike Borquez anticipated that sign thievery would occur when he decided to run for council, although, he says, "I didn't expect it quite to the degree it's happened."
Some of Borquez's signs have been replaced up to two times, but he doesn't bother having signs replaced a third time. The candidate says most of his signs disappear in the dead of night, and although it upsets him, he knows there's nothing he can do to control it. "In a perfect world we wouldn't have this, but we all know we don't have that," Borquez says.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
