Monday, August 25, 2014

Fun with campaign signs: Recycling edition

...And not the "green" kind of recycling, either...

One of the habits of campaigns is to not throw out *anything* that could be used in a subsequent campaign - office supplies, signs, t-shirts, whatever.

Generally speaking, frugality can be a good thing.  However, it can be taken too far sometimes.

Example - Rep. Jeff Dial (R - LD18):

Looks pretty standard - candidate name and office, and as a bonus, it even has a "Voted for Obamacare" attack sign posted next to it (it's an R primary thing - they hate the president so much that they are campaigning by linking their opponents to Barack Obama in any way that they can; it's fun to see in a two-way race when both sides engage in race-baiting mud-slinging).

It took me a second to realize that there was something "different" about this sign, and another couple of seconds to figure out what it was.

See the bottom, where it says "Republican for State Representative"?

From the AZSOS' candidate listing page -



 In other words, the sign is all about putting his name out there - his name is a huge part of the sign, while the office is in (relatively) tiny print.  People driving by will notice the name, but not the office.

Annoying bloggers with cameras, on the other hand... :)

Another dead giveaway that the sign is from an earlier campaign is the weathering.  The front side (the side facing the street) above isn't too bad; many signs, even new ones, are showing indications of exposure to the elements in AZ).

The back side, however, shows the sign's age very clearly -


Just a guess here, but it seems that Dial stored the signs from his previous campaigns outside...and this one was directly exposed to the weather.

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