NY state here. Some signs for judges (family court, surrogate court)–guess I’d better figure out who’s worth voting for and who isn’t, as none of the names are familiar to me.
Both candidates for state senate have quite a few signs up.
The Dems had a hotly contested primary for state assembly–many of the signs, for losing as well as winning candidates, remain on display (the primary was last week) along with a few for the Republican candidate.
Just a handful of signs for the Republican challenger for the US House seat currently occupied by a Democrat, who has no signs up at all that I can see.
There was a pretty fierce contest for attorney general among four Democratic candidates, no signs at all that I saw. No signs for the GOP candidate either.
We apparently have a US Senate race. Gillibrand is running again and has no signs. Why should she bother? Her opponent is so obscure I have no idea who it is, and I’m pretty plugged in to electoral politics. There are no signs supporting him or her.
There are lots of signs around here for the Republican candidate for governor, but then again he is our county executive so that makes some sense. Andrew Cuomo and Cynthia Nixon didn’t have any yard signs for their primary, and Cuomo doesn’t have any up now.
I have done a lot of campaign work (volunteer only) and was talking to a veteran politician who told me that yard signs were IHHO “overrated.” She likened the use of yard signs, in most cases, to nuclear proliferation…I put up one sign so now you have to put up two, which makes you need to put up three, and so forth, and next thing you know there are intersections with 48 signs representing 18 candidates for 10 offices, none of which anybody can read. This, she says, does not benefit anyone.
She does say there are two cases in which yard signs MIGHT be helpful. First, to increase name recognition of a mostly unknown candidate taking on a much more familiar name. And second, when people who are well known within a community post a sign, especially if the candidate they support is unexpected. The Junior League white woman in a wealthy suburb of a large Southern city who posts an Obama sign after having been a staunch Republican all her life, that kind of thing. “Oh!” people say as they drive past. “Mrs. Soandso has lost her mind!” Or, preferably, “Maybe I better think about Obama a little more carefully!”
Other than that, says my politician, yard signs are pretty useless. Maybe she’s full of it, I don’t know. But she’s been in politics like forty years and never lost an election, so…
