2020 tensions lead to yard sign shenanigans
Democratic congressional hopeful Ike Mccorkle woke up one morning last week to find 15 of his political yard signs touting Democratic candidates stolen and another half dozen dumped into the street outside his Parker home.
The retired Marine called the incident an act of “attempted intimidation,” one that laid bare for him just how divisive and noxious this year’s campaign season has become, as the Nov. 3 election looms less than four weeks away.
“This is something that is a reflection of something that is happening in our homes and in our society,” said Mccorkle, who is challenging U.S. Rep. Ken Buck in the solidly red 4th Congressional District. “No one should be invading someone else’s property and taking someone’s property and destroying it.”
While yard sign shenanigans during election season are nothing new, this fall’s particularly tense and polarized political atmosphere is giving the theft and vandalism of placards and signs a sharper and nastier edge.
Last month, a 12-year-old boy riding on his bike while holding a Trump sign in Boulder was attacked by a woman riding past on a moped, according to police. A few weeks later, a teenager holding a pro-biden sign in Denver said a man in a Range Rover pointed a gun at him.
Media outlets have reported other acts of political sign destruction in Jefferson County, Colorado Springs and Castle Rock in the last few weeks.
“There’s a lot of anger (and other emotion) in the public right now — it’s been a tumultuous year and it’s a scary time,” University of Colorado at Boulder political science professor Anand Sokhey wrote in an email. “Identity is being triggered (constantly) by our politics, which when combined with the pandemic and economic pressures is certainly a recipe for people taking actions that are linked to how they see themselves.”
In Denver’s Lowry neighborhood last month, the homeowner association was caught in a political maelstrom when its policy disallowing signs of any kind was challenged by residents wanting to post Black Lives Matter placards on their lawns.
Sokhey, who for years has studied the campaign yard sign phenomenon in the United States, said it’s too soon to say whether 2020 is a bigger year for lawn politics than was the case four years ago.
In 2016, his research found that 12% of the American public reported displaying visible support — including bumper stickers — for a candidate, which was higher than what had been seen during election cycles in the 1980s and 1990s. But, Sokhey said, the 2004 election had 20% of people displaying visible support for a candidate.
“What we have seen continue to accelerate over the past four years is trends in affective polarization — we’re in a moment of deepseated identity politics in this country,” he said. “Signs are important to people, in part, because they are expressions of identity. The parties’ bases are very, very fired up, so I’m not surprised to see a lot of politics on display.”
A political science professor at Colorado State University, Kyle Saunders, said what is clear is that with the increasing prevalence of easily accessible video recording devices and the continued proliferation of social media, that mix “certainly has made the possibility of these kinds of viral events more likely over time.”
Whether disputes over political displays are increasingly incorporating violence as a tactic is not definitive, Saunders said, but he pointed to a study published in Politico last week that found a disturbing rise in the proportion of voters from either major party saying violence is justified in advancing political goals.
Whereas in 2017 only 8% of respondents from either the Democratic or Republican parties justified the use of violence, that share skyrocketed to 33% of Democrats and 36% of Republicans who thought the same thing on Sept. 1 of this year — a year defined by tumult and protest in the streets of America.
Representatives for both major parties in Colorado told The Denver Post they have received tens of thousands of requests for yard signs this year.
“We can’t keep yard signs in stock,” said David Pourshoushtari, spokesman for the Democrats. “It indicates that there’s a lot of energy for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, John Hickenlooper and down the ticket.”
Joe Jackson, a spokesman for the GOP in Colorado, said he has heard of signs expressing support for Republican contenders getting trashed and stolen in the same way Mccorkle’s Democrat-supporting signs were last week.
He hopes it will end, despite the fact that more than three weeks remain before Election Day.
“All Coloradans, regardless of their party affiliation, should feel comfortable expressing their views without fearing that their property will be destroyed, vandalized or stolen,” Jackson said.