Every political campaign workshop I've ever attended has taught me the same thing: campaign signs don't win elections.
Knocking on doors wins elections. Talking to voters wins elections. Building relationships, earning trust and convincing people that you might actually know what you're doing wins elections.
And yet, I've never attended one of those workshops where the instructor followed that advice by saying, "So don't bother buying any signs."
Quite the opposite.
Buy the signs. Put them everywhere. Get the big ones. Find the good intersections. Make sure your opponent doesn't have more than you do.
Apparently, signs don't win elections, but not having enough of them might lose one.
After nearly 20 years of participating in local political campaigns, I've come to appreciate that campaign signs occupy a strange place in our democracy. They're simultaneously one of the least important parts of running for office and one of the things people are most willing to lose their minds over.
I've seen some pretty entertaining examples.
One of the more memorable examples involved a pickup truck outfitted with a giant billboard criticizing County Commissioner Tye Menser.
The truck was frequently parked near the bottom of Courthouse Hill, but it didn't stop there. It seemed to follow Tye around, even showing up at personal events where he was playing music with his band.
Now, there's something inherently ridiculous about a grown man driving around with a giant political billboard in the bed of his pickup truck, apparently dedicating a considerable portion of his free time to irritating another grown man. It kind of reminded me of the scene from The Blues Brothers where Jake and Elwood drive around advertising for their show with the giant bullhorn on the top of the car.
But there's also a point where political expression begins to look a lot like harassment.
Criticizing an elected official is fair game. Following that person into their personal life, particularly when they're simply trying to enjoy playing music with friends, is something else entirely.
What I remember most about that episode wasn't the truck. It was how Tye handled it.
He took it in stride, showed remarkable restraint, and refused to let the spectacle get the better of him.
I admired that. Frankly, I'm not sure I would have demonstrated the same level of maturity under those circumstances.
And maybe that's the first lesson of campaign sign wars: sometimes the most revealing thing about political nonsense isn't the person creating it, but the person who has to put up with it.
Of course, there's a long tradition of perfectly legal, occasionally clever and frequently ridiculous behavior surrounding those little pieces of plastic and plywood.
One candidate puts a sign at an intersection. Their opponent puts a bigger one next to it. Someone moves theirs 6 inches forward. The other campaign complains about etiquette. Pretty soon, you've got grown adults arguing about the proper pecking order of corrugated plastic.
If only we brought that kind of passion to discussions about the county budget.
Of course, sometimes things go beyond political theater.
I've had dozens of campaign signs stolen over the years. Once, I discovered that one of mine had been vandalized, and eventually word got back to me about who had done it. The person had apparently been bragging about his handiwork around town.
As it turned out, he was angry with me over an old disagreement involving a building permit from my time as mayor.
So I got his phone number and called him.
We talked about the permit. We talked about where campaign signs could legally be placed. I listened to his complaints, and he listened to my explanation.
I didn't convince him to vote for me. I'm reasonably confident he still didn't like me very much.
The feeling was probably mutual.
But we understood each other a little better, and the vandalism stopped.
Sometimes a respectful mutual dislike is a perfectly acceptable outcome.
In 2023, things got even more interesting.
During the West Thurston Fire Commissioner race, candidate Jeff Merryman began losing campaign signs around Rochester. Rather than simply replacing them, he hid Apple AirTags in some of the replacements.
Eventually, the signs led him straight to a dumpster.
The incident made KING 5 News, and the person removing the signs acknowledged taking several of them, maintaining that he believed they had been improperly placed, yet he only removed ones for candidates he opposed.
Some of my campaign signs were among those recovered in that same dumpster.
I remember thinking that the whole thing was a pretty remarkable use of technology. We'd reached the point where candidates were putting tracking devices in campaign signs, and the signs were apparently getting better investigative attention than some missing bicycles.
But the episode also demonstrated something I've learned over the years: when somebody does something ridiculous to your campaign, sometimes the smartest thing you can do is find a way to make the ridiculousness work in your favor.
And then there was the 2023 Lacey City Council incident, when surveillance footage captured Councilmember Ed Kunkel removing a campaign sign belonging to Emily Clouse outside a coffee stand.
Kunkel said he believed the sign had been placed without permission and later acknowledged he should have checked with the property owner first.
The video made the evening news.
Imagine explaining to your younger self that one day you might end up on television because you pulled somebody else's plastic sign out of the ground.
Politics is a strange business.
But not every sign incident is equally amusing.
During the 2023 Emily Clouse–Terry Ballard campaign, I remember seeing what appeared to be an extraordinary number of Terry Ballard signs slashed or cut apart.
It was striking because the damage appeared deliberate and repeated.
And now, during this year's county commissioner race, we've seen another disturbing example.
Nic Dunning has reported multiple campaign signs deliberately slashed, and surveillance footage has now captured a man using what appears to be a cutting tool to damage one of them.
I encourage readers to watch the video. If you recognize the individual, share what you know with the appropriate authorities.
There's nothing particularly clever about taking a blade to somebody else's political expression.
Which brings me to a debate I recently found myself drawn into, somewhat reluctantly, over whether deliberately slashing campaign signs constitutes political vandalism, political intimidation, or what I described as low-level political violence.
People had some strong opinions.
Some argued that the term political violence should be reserved for threats or physical harm against people. Others pointed out that broader definitions can include politically motivated property destruction and intimidation.
I understand the distinction, and I appreciate why people care about the words we use.
A damaged campaign sign is not equivalent to an assault, an arson attack or an assassination. Nobody should pretend otherwise.
But recognizing differences in severity doesn't mean we should ignore the relationship between increasingly aggressive forms of political conduct.
I think back to what happened at Olympia Mayor Cheryl Selby's home in 2020.
During that summer of political unrest, demonstrators descended on her private residence. Her home was spray-painted with political messages, and during a subsequent demonstration, people gathered outside late into the night, shouting, setting off fireworks, damaging property and even burning a campaign sign in the street. Video from that night also showed someone holding a flare.
Think about that for a moment.
A mayor, in her own home, with people outside engaging in behavior that would make just about anyone concerned for their family's safety.
Whatever grievances those individuals had with city government, there were plenty of legitimate ways to express them. Showing up at someone's house and terrorizing their family shouldn't be one of them.
And that's where I think the discussion about political vandalism and political violence becomes important.
There's a potential escalation pathway in political hostility. It can begin with hateful rhetoric, move into intimidation and crimes against property, escalate into threats or violence against people, and, at its most extreme, become organized violence directed against government and democratic institutions.
Not every person who says something hateful will vandalize property. Not every vandal will commit an assault. And not every politically motivated assault constitutes domestic terrorism.
These are different acts, with different degrees of severity and different legal definitions.
But they don't exist in entirely separate universes, either.
The question is, where do we want to draw the line?
At hateful rhetoric? At stealing signs? At taking a knife to someone's political expression? At following elected officials into their personal lives? At showing up outside their homes? Or do we wait until somebody actually gets hurt?
I would argue that we ought to establish our standards well before we reach that last question.
And those standards ought to apply regardless of political affiliation, ideology or whether we happen to like the person being targeted.
We don't have to agree with someone's political expression to defend their right to engage in it.
In fact, that's precisely when defending that right matters most.
Nor should we accuse another candidate of directing or encouraging vandalism without evidence.
Those are two separate principles, and we ought to be capable of defending both at the same time.
There's another lesson in all of this.
Political people, myself included, frequently complain that we're spending too much time talking about personalities, campaign drama and roadside signs instead of the real issues facing our communities.
That's a fair criticism.
But I've also come to believe that how people respond to these small moments of adversity tells us something about their character.
Do they respond with humor? Do they exercise restraint? Do they immediately assume the worst about their opponents? Can they condemn bad behavior without turning it into an excuse for more bad behavior?
Those questions aren't entirely unrelated to leadership.
After all, if you can't handle a disagreement over a piece of plastic attached to two metal stakes, how can you handle a real discussion?
I still believe campaign signs don't win elections.
But apparently, they can reveal quite a bit about the people participating in them, like a political Rorschach test.
So here's my proposal.
Put up your signs. Put up more signs. Make them bigger. Make them funny. Make them memorable. Just remember that your opponent is a human being with a life outside of politics.
And when the election is over, please go pick them up.
But leave everybody else's signs alone.
If you really want to defeat somebody politically, there's a much more effective tool than a box cutter.
It's called a ballot.
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Wayne Fournier is a firefighter, Thurston County commissioner and former mayor who has spent more than three decades working in public safety. His column appears in The Chronicle twice each month.
