Anchorage School Board candidate Andy Holleman filed a police report Thursday morning after finding sexual images duct taped to a campaign sign defaced with the words “child porn” and “ASD approved.”
While defacing or knocking down a campaign sign isn’t out of the ordinary, there has been an increase in vandalism in the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s municipal election. In addition to the sexually explicit materials, signs for Assembly candidates Anna Brawley and Zac Johnson were sliced out and stolen with the frames destroyed. Nearby, campaign signs for Assembly candidates Brian Flynn and Rachel Ries and school board candidates Mark Anthony Cox and Irene Boll remained standing.
The vandalism has become an almost nightly trend targeting moderate-to-progressive candidates. Signs have been sawed down, cut out with knives or box cutters, destroyed, stolen, and defaced. Sandbags have been sliced open, rendering them unusable, and the wooden frames destroyed. Paula DeLaiarro, treasurer for Holleman’s campaign, estimated the damages to be $1,000 for the Holleman campaign alone.
More than two dozen 4-by-8-foot signs belonging to Brawley, Johnson, Holleman and Assembly candidates Felix Rivera, Karen Bronga and George Martinez have been destroyed.
“I’ve never seen vandalism this bad or this organized,” said John Henry Heckendorn, who works for Ship Creek Group, a political firm which is running Holleman’s campaign. “The result is thousands of dollars worth of damage and an advertising medium that’s starting to get rendered inaccessible to candidates on the center left.”
Campaign signs have been shown in studies to help increase name recognition and can be especially impactful in close races.
While moderate-to-progressive candidates’ signs have been targeted, conservative candidates’ signs have fared much better. In all cases where vandalism has occurred in shared locations, the conservative challengers’ signs have remained standing.
The Alaska Current reached out to Cox, Ries, Flynn, School Board candidate Dave Donley and Assembly candidates Spencer Moore, Leigh Sloan and Travis Szanto to ask if any of their materials had been damaged. Moore and Cox said they have not had any signs deliberately damaged during their campaigns, although Moore said that two were stolen. Ries, Flynn, Sloan, Donley and Szanto did not respond to the inquiry.
Campaign signs are generally put up on private property belonging to campaign supporters, or sometimes placed in paid locations to help candidates gain name recognition. Rivera had a sign destroyed in Midtown which his campaign spent $300 to place. Johnson and Holleman had signs damaged at the same location, while signs belonging to conservative candidates Ries, Flynn and Szanto were left unharmed.
East Anchorage candidates Bronga and Martinez had signs destroyed in locations where opponents’ signs were left standing. Their signs at Muldoon and Debarr were sawed down, while signs at other locations were cut out with razor blades next to untouched signs for Moore. Signs for progressive candidates at Kava’s Pancake House were attacked multiple times, while nearby signs for Sloan and Cox were untouched.
“I feel like it’s a personal assault,” Bronga said. “I’m saddened that Leigh and I agreed to treat each other with respect and her supporters are showing real disrespect. I’ve worked hard for every yard sign and every road sign and it is pretty sad.”
The vandalism is far more stark than an average cycle, where materials for candidates on both sides of the spectrum often get knocked down.
“Lots of candidates are talking about putting toxic politics behind us,” said Ira Slomski-Pritz, Johnson’s campaign manager. “This makes me very worried about how that pans out in reality.”
