Sign Language

‘Tis the season…for campaign yard signs! Nobody really likes them, but they are effective ways for candidates to gain name recognition and for residents to show support, so I suppose they aren’t going to go away.


part of my district (2-3) in LP...one sign per candidate! (2010)

As a committeeperson (who are the journeymen and women of each party who do the political grunt work on the ground to get candidates elected), one of my duties is to put out such yard signs for candidates on our ballot.

I take a lot of pride in the work I do.  I don’t put out too many signs, make sure they get replaced or stand them back up if they fall over, and I get rid of them quickly when the election is over. In  representing my own voting district,  I always ask permission from the property owner (even when they’ve allowed me to place signs previously) and I always commit to picking up signs I’ve placed as soon as the election is over because I know people don’t really like looking at them. Usually, the same evening after the polls close, and certainly no later than the next day, I’ve pulled all of mine.

Some elections are worse than others. The 2011 election was memorable for the sheer number of candidates (county commissioners, county row officers, local school boards and local township supervisors/borough commissioners) all up at the same time. With numerous candidates, the signage to promote them all was off the hook.

However, in all the years I’ve worked on campaigns or been a candidate myself, I never saw anything like what greeted me this past Saturday afternoon when I was out running errands. All up and down Ridge Pike through Lower Providence, one candidate had literally carpet-bombed us with their yard signs. There were literally 25 or 30 placed on EACH SIDE of some intersections, and spaced so closely that no other candidates’ signs (of either party, for all contests) were readable. It was a truly obnoxious display of self-promotion.

 

Worse, with the 35-mph winds that day, some of the sleeves had blown off the stakes and were flying loose into the adjacent lawns or the street.  They weren’t sunk into the ground well, so some were twisted sideways or had been blown completely over onto the ground. Some signs I’d placed within my voting district were pulled out of the ground and tossed aside in the process of this invasion.  All in all, it looked absolutely hideous and it was visually overwhelming.  

I don’t mind saying that the signs were placed by a candidate from my own party, but had anyone come to LP and done this, I’d have had the same reaction.

2-3 polling place, primary election, 2013

You should also know that it’s against the law to remove campaign yard signs you did not place, yard signs belonging to another candidate, and removing signs on private property. I believe it’s a misdemeanor and there’s a fine involved if caught and convicted. It’s also considered bad form to drop signs on someone’s property without their permission, a practice I’m aware that one of the candidates running for supervisor this year has been doing. Thus, there wasn’t much I could do myself since I was not the property owner where the signs were placed and I did not place them myself.

Outraged at this veritable trashing of our community, I contacted our municipal party leader, Jim Van Horn, who, for reasons unknown, was utterly uninterested in doing anything. I was told “there’s nothing we can do about it”.  Faced with this unwillingness to confront the perpetrator, I contacted the individual – again, a member of my own party - myself. Giving the benefit of the doubt, I explained that aside from the larger issue of what happened and how terrible it looked, I also expressed my opinion that trashing up our community this way not only made this particular candidate look bad, but it reflected poorly upon our party and my fear that disgusted voters would take it out on her and potentially other candidates on our ballot on election day. At that point I’d already heard from two voters who saw the mess after I did and had called to ask about how it came to be there.

I was frankly also fearful that my constituents who live here and friends who traverse through LP, knowing that I place campaign signs in my district, would think that I was responsible for this visual assault. No committeeperson I know of either party in this area would ever have placed this many signs in this way. Not to mention, signs aren’t cheap, and it’s waste of a resource to place so many in one area.

I am happy to report that the candidate was horrified, and relayed that a third-party contractor was purportedly hired to place their signs, but they were never told to place so many signs so closely together. The candidate agreed with my assessment and by 9:30 Sunday morning, the vast majority of them had been removed. I applaud their responsiveness and concern for our community; they communicated with me several times to assure that they’d done a good enough job of repairing the damage. While there are still a number of them around, at a ratio that I’d say is about 5:1 of every other candidate’s sign out there, it’s far better than it was.

Whatever your personal feelings about campaign yard signs, just know that come November 6, the day after the election, they’ll all be going away…until next spring’s primary!

As The Township Turns

In the latest episode of the soap opera known as 'As the Township Turns", I got another piece of smear mail today ... the one I had heard last week was coming, and to which I've already responded in a mailer that dropped over the weekend.  Honestly, people, I didn't start this nonsense, but when attacked I will finish it. One only gets one reputation, and over the years I have been diligent in defending myself. This race has been no exception.

While it claims that I am saying anything to scare voters, this piece from opponent Sorgini claims all kinds of outrageous things, many of which were raised and responded to in the Spring before I won the primary.

To me, the most ridiculous ones - again ,from someone who never attended so much as one meeting or hearing that I participated in during all my years of service, so he has no personal knowledge as to whether what he's being told is true - were Sorgini's claims regarding the Zoning Hearing Board (ZHB), including that 'she exceeded her budget'.

While I served 5 years, and chaired for two, the ZHB has no budget to exceed (in any municipality). The ZHB cannot control who files challenges to ordinances passed by the supervisors, nor can it control who appeals their decisions. The Township is obligated to pay the ZHB's legal bills, whatever they are, and the individual zoning members have absolutely no control over nor say in how much is allocated or spent on conducting its business. It didn't help that our current supervisors' chairman saw fit to cause the Township to sue his own ZHB several times to help his political friends. We can't control that either.

There was also never a time I "voted" not to allow residents to speak. Questions from the public, and public comment periods, are by law a part of every public hearing conducted by any municipal board. The mailer doesn't even reference with any specificity within which  of dozens of hearings this allegedly occured. 

The rest is pure nonsense, again put forth by someone with no personal knowledge and who either doesn't understand legal process, evidentiary rules, when a party is considered to have standing or not,  or how municipal meetings and hearings are conducted, or is intentionally bending the facts to mislead voters. Either way, they're not qualities you want in your leaders.

The information we put forth about the landfill was fact checked by an MCRC attorney, appeared on the supervisors' most recent agenda  (for Nov. 3), and I stand by what it said. 

Curiously, that same meeting on which the landfill topic appeared was inexplicably canceled at the last minute. I can't remember the last time that happened, if ever, and it couldn't have been because they didn't have a quorum, because three of the five supervisors were seen by me and my family having dinner at a restaurant we were at, that same evening, during the time the meeting would have been in session. Things that make you go "hmmm"... perhaps they wanted to wait until after the election?

I have always been diligent about making my personal phone numbers available. Residents with legitimate questions are always welcome to contact me to get all sides of an issue. Otherwise, the nonsense on this mailer belongs in the circular file.

Surprise!

I love surprises. Wait, let me rephrase that. I love GOOD surprises. Birthday presents, spontaneous weekend getaways, an unexpected promotion, flowers for no reason. That's all good. Unexpected layoffs, favorite friends and relatives who pass too soon, a flooded basement (and negative campaign mailers full of inaccuracies, LOL), not so good.

Well, I was able to organize a good surprise for Lower Providence...my gift to you, regardless of the outcome of next week's primary. As I have campaigned, knocking on hundreds of doors in the Township over the last couple of months, it's something that many people (whether they can vote for me or not) have told me is high on their 'wish list' for this Township. I am thrilled to be able to bring it to you.

Stay tuned...it should be delivered tomorrow.

Corporate Campaign Donations - Right, Wrong or Indifferent?

As we all heard last week, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down what seemed to many to be an illogical decision regarding corporate campaign donations, which is now the law of the land and controlling law over lower court decisions and appeals.

I can understand the logic, although I don't necessarily agree with it. Corporations were seen as separate entities with a protected right of free speech, just like individuals. The Court felt that a corporation's free speech rights could also be expressed via donations of money to campaigns of candidates for elected office.

This ruling, of course, meant that the McCain-Feingold legislation proposing campaign finance reform is dead on the federal level. I think this ruling is a game-changer, and will take campaigning, particularly for state and federal elected offices, to a new high (or low) we've never seen before. It may mean that whoever can get the most money spent on them will win - essentially ensuring that elections can be bought.

I also think that whoever gets elected to office will be beholden to all kinds of special interest industries and companies who will most likely expect some return on their investment. Of course, adding insult to injury, they can probably deduct their donations from their corporate tax returns, too - so taxpayers will be underwriting this corporate courting of our elected officials.

We can change this on the state level by encouraging our elected state reps to introduce and pass legislation governing campaigns in state and local campaigns. However, since that's not yet the case - corporations are free to write and fund ads that support any candidate's campaign.

Ironically, this ruling may impact the litigation filed last year by J.P. Mascaro & Sons against the winners of the fall 2009 election for the Lower Providence Board of Supervisors, Colleen Eckman and Don Thomas. 

To recap, during that campaign, Colleen and Don and their committees allegedly (I'm going to use 'allegedly' a lot here folks, there's a lot of litigation and counter-litigation flying around in this case) issued a 'smear mailer' right before the primary, alleging that the two strong candidates running against them, Craig Dininny, an incumbent supervisor, and Jim Dougherty, a former supervisor running again, had improperly accepted campaign donations from Mascaro (the corporation) and three other township vendors, when in fact they had only accepted (legal) donations from several individual employees of J.P. Mascaro and those other vendors.

Those same individuals from those same companies that were allegedly accused of wrongdoing along with Craig and Jim also donated money to the Lower Providence Republican Committee, which they in turn gave to the campaigns of....Colleen and Don.  No allegedly needed here; it's in their Committee's campaign expense reports and the Republican Committee's minutes and financial statements.

The smear mailer is widely believed to be the main reason Craig and Jim lost the primary.

J.P. Mascaro was not happy to be accused, via the alleged mailer alleging something they had not done, and, to defend their corporate reputation,  filed suit in the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas against Colleen, Don and their respective committees. That litigation is still ongoing.

Even IF Craig and Jim had accepted those campaign donations as Colleen and Don alleged they were made - by corporations, not individuals working for those corporations, it may now be viewed in a better light.

I know Craig and Jim well, and I know they are the kind of people who like to do things by the book. They have had opportunities to do the wrong thing and did not. In this case, their campaign did nothing wrong and even declined to use negative information in their campaign against Colleen and Don - preferring instead to take the high road and run a clean campaign, free of negativity, and instead focusing on the positive things they'd accomplished for the community.

That choice likely cost them the election, but I know they sleep just fine at night.

Time will tell what the impact of the recent Supreme Court ruling is on this case, if any, but I have to wonder if J.P. Mascaro (and Craig and Jim) are feeling a little bit  vindicated these days.