What with a rumored presidential election on the horizon, as well as state primaries, alert drivers like me have noticed the proliferation of roadside campaign signs. The traditionally tasteful small ones are out in abundance, but it seems that the more affluent candidates are purchasing and setting up much larger ones. Some are gigantic – the size of small drive-in movie screens, so I guess size matters. I guess those are for emphasis. They say, “We’d walk on water for . . . . . .”
I’m always interested in the effect these signs have, if any. At the beginning of election season, it starts out small – a few here and there. A couple of local candidates running for the legislature, and whose names I’ve forgotten since they ran two years ago. Here in New Hampshire, with our legislative body numbering in the hundreds, almost everyone makes it. Like getting a trophy in t-ball. As the election comes closer, the signs sprout up like mushrooms in a wet meadow. Some campaign workers would set them up in a row, so as one drives along, you see them one after another, because if one builds name recognition, eight more will be that much stronger. Every so often there is a new name that I don’t recognize, so I’ll go to their website to see what they’re all about. If they don’t have a website and are relying on their road signs, well then, they don’t deserve my vote.
Sign placement is key to running a successful campaign too, it would seem. Signs pop up in clusters near intersections, stop signs, and traffic lights. We have a couple of those in our area, with signs too numerous to really read and digest. They’re a blur as I drive by. Then, there are the singleton signs. One out if in the middle of nowhere, all by itself, looking lonely and forgotten. I sometimes think that the campaign workers putting out signs had one left over and thought, “Oh what the heck. I’ll stick it here.”
To the true disciples of a candidate, flags are now all the rage. We didn’t see those until a few years ago. A former president who shall remain nameless, or his campaign, seems to have invented these. They really appeared in 2020, with the incredibly dignified logo. “No More Bull#@$@$#.” I know, right? How much more compelling an argument can you have for swaying your vote? These flags are massive, and can be coupled with the American flag, and sometimes a Confederate Flag if they’re running on a platform of seceding from the Union. One of those appeared in a pick-up truck in my community’s Old Home Day parade in support of a senate candidate. After a storm of criticism, the candidate disavowed knowledge of the flag, but he lost anyway. When I see these flags flying, I’m never quite sure if it’s for a political partisan or just a remnant of a July 4th celebration. If it’s the former, I don’t really want to engage. If you have noticed, and I have, the vehicles flying the massive flags are usually something the size of a troop carrier, smokestacks belching exhaust on both sides. One never really sees these on a Prius or a Tesla.
In fact, just before the primary in January, I came out of the grocery store and there was massive pick-up truck, something that you’d need the Spanish Steps to reach the cab. It was plastered with signs and flags flying from all four corners. I was tempted to pull up beside the driver and call out, “So, still undecided?” He looked, though, like a refugee from “Duck Dynasty”, so I didn’t think he’d see the humor, nor did I wish to engage.
Every so often, I come across a sign placement that’s truly remarkable, almost visionary. For example, there was a lone sign just up the street that I’d see every day, for a former president. I won’t say which one. Some enterprising business put theirs right next to it. Sadly, at least for the former president, the business was hauling away junk. So, there right next to his campaign sign was a bold, “We’ll Get Rid of Your Junk”. It was there for quite a while before someone from the campaign must have noticed it. It disappeared before I took a picture of it and sent it to a national news outlet. A few miles away, I saw a jumbo flag for the same former president attached to a large pine tree. At some point in the spring, the tree was blown down in a wind storm, because the flag is still there, flying from a massive dead stump, the tree lying in a state of decomposition behind it. Is that a metaphor? Maybe a statement about how the campaign will go?
At the end of our street, there is a four-corners that is fairly well travelled. For a number of months, I called it “Bad Karma Corner”. Every losing candidate in the primaries had a sign there, and some had a couple on diagonal corners. That really sealed their fate. I’d thought of contacting their campaigns to tell them they really, really didn’t want to advertise on that corner. Maybe it was the deep drainage culvert right behind it that would somehow predict their subterranean polling numbers. The faster these candidates faded from the campaign, the longer it seemed to take for their disheartened workers to come and pull their signs. There is one person running currently for governor who is our perennial candidate. He’s run for everything – congress, senate, and governor. To no avail. The only thing getting bigger are his hopes and his signs, and his campaign must have spent a fortune. That fortune will end up in a landfill somewhere.
As I may have mentioned before, and my faithful readers will know, I’m a registered independent voter. Yes, I like to play the field. I voted for John McCain once, and I greatly admired him until he went all crazy and made Sarah Palin his running mate. The thought of that person a heartbeat away was just too much for my nervous system. And Gerald Ford did a great deal to heal the nation’s trauma of, well, Richard Nixon. But, because I’m an independent, I get emails for every far-right candidate across the country. Many are standing in front of “The Wall” holding a shotgun. Neither image works for me. These candidates are really big on “taking back”. As if they have some legacy ownership of the United States. They know I can’t cast a vote for them, they just want me to send them a few bucks. The best part is the I can “unsubscribe”, and I do – really quickly. And, as a bonus, I can sound profoundly informed when they are on the nightly news, having said something really stupid publicly. “I know him – he’s running in (fill in your favorite red state here), and he sent me an email.”
I’m not quite sure, in this electronic age, if there is a need to put thousands of signs all over the landscape. At least when I go to a neighboring community, I don’t know any of the people running, so it’s not particularly bothersome. But here at home, it is a bit distracting. Particularly as they all use the same graphic designer. The wavy flag. Red, white, and blue. Although we do have a candidate this year running for governor whose signs are green, with an image of the White Mountains. I don’t like her any better, but it’s different. I know if I were running for office, I’d borrow the purple and orange of my favorite coffee shop. And based on my coffee consumption, I’m sure they’d support me.
I'm Thinking...No! 