Signs of the times: Campaign vandalism escalating?
They say they've never seen anything like it. Tires slashed. Campaign signs stolen. A urine-soaked garbage bag dumped on the lawn.
They say they've never seen anything like it.
Tires slashed. Campaign signs stolen. A urine-soaked garbage bag dumped on the lawn.
The victimized homeowners are on opposite ends of the political spectrum in two of Southeastern Pennsylvania's presidential battleground suburbs. But on Thursday, Democrat Beth Sadoff of Richboro, Bucks County, and Republican Jerry Dowd of Radnor Township, Delaware County, were on common ground.
Sadoff said she called police Monday after tires on two of her family's cars were slashed on the same night that someone stole all three of the Democratic campaign signs on her lawn, including one for Hillary Clinton.
Dowd said someone recently dumped a trash bag covered in urine on his lawn after uprooting one of several Donald Trump signs - an escalation from the four other times when thieves just made off with his Trump placards.
To police, swiping signs this time of year is a mostly harmless election-season ritual dating back eons. But going this far?
Sadoff and Dowd, in separate interviews, said they viewed their misfortune as an unwelcome offshoot of an unsavory and rhetorically inflammatory presidential campaign.
"I haven't been a victim of a crime since somebody stole a radio out of my car when I lived in Washington 25 years ago," said Sadoff, 52, a travel agent who lives at home with her husband and two sons, one of whom works for Democratic congressional candidate Steve Santarsiero.
"It's kind of freaking us out to think that somebody targeted us," Sadoff said.
Dowd, who works in enterprise software application sales and is a father of three, said only his Trump signs had been targeted, and not signs for other Republicans.
"It's a disgrace," said Dowd, 47, a self-described conservative Republican. "I feel that this election has really brought out the worst in the candidates on both sides - and the worst in a lot of people."
Dowd said it has shaken the Rockwellian portrait he has of his neighborhood, which feeds into one of the state's most exclusive school districts. Some Colonial houses sit on 2 acres and most everyone, he said, manages at least a modicum of mutual respect.
Clinton, Trump, and their surrogates have made multiple appearances in Bucks and Delaware Counties, where the nominees are courting die-hard and disaffected Democrats, conservative Republicans, and well-educated Democratic women viewed as critical to carrying Pennsylvania. Registration is split roughly evenly between the two major parties in the two counties, which border the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia.
Sadoff and Dowd live in well-heeled enclaves where houses are valued at $500,000 and more.
"It's disappointing," Dowd said, "that someone would try to take your property and try to silence your First Amendment right."
Radnor Police Lt. Andy Block said dumping garbage soaked in urine was beyond the run-of-the-mill reports of sign-theft high jinks that have come in at a rate of about six a week.
"We understand everyone has the right to voice their opinion on who their candidates are," Block said, "but it's egregious behavior. Nobody should have to put up with that."
Sadoff and Dowd said they had never experienced a backlash from displaying campaign signs until this year's election, in which passions have been intense and rhetoric has been coarse.
At the Sadoff home, where the family has lived for 16 years, the first sign, for Santarsiero, went up two months ago. A month later, they planted one for Democratic state House candidate Neale Dougherty. On Oct. 22, a Clinton sign went up.
Then the tire slashers struck.
On Halloween morning, the signs were gone. Soon after Ari Sadoff pulled out of the driveway in the family's Subaru Impreza, his son noticed a tire on the other car, a Saab, had been slashed. Ari Sadoff soon realized he, too, was driving on a busted tire.
Beth Sadoff said she told a responding police officer to take note of the fact that a neighbor's Trump signs had not been touched.
The officer, whose name she did not jot down, replied, " 'Well, you know, mischief night,' " she recounted.
In a call to the station Thursday morning, Sadoff said, she was told there had been no investigation into the matter. Richboro police did not respond to a request for comment.
"I went to sleep Sunday night with two cars with perfectly good tires and three lawn signs," Sadoff said, "and I woke up Monday morning with none of them. It looked kind of politically motivated to me.
"I don't think my neighbors are walking around with knives trying to go after me," she added. "It's usually a pretty friendly neighborhood. My husband is a registered Republican.
"But this election is a different story, I guess."
The Sadoffs have replaced the signs. But now they leave their outside lights on overnight.
Dowd, too, has taken measures. One Trump sign is now dangling from a tree on his property.
"I feel like I've gotten over on the guy who's stealing the signs," he said. "They're not going to get it."
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