Stephanie Grimes of the Oakmont Democrats pulls campaign signs from a hillside along Freeport Road, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024, in Harmar. Political yard signs promoting both parties have turned up mangled or gone missing along the municipally-owned patch of grass. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
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Stephanie Grimes snaps on some rubber gloves, dips her fingers into a styrofoam bowl of Vaseline, glitter and fox urine granules and gets to smearing. It’s her latest attempt to preserve the load of mangled campaign signs that she’s repeatedly rescued from hillsides in Harmar along Freeport Road near the Hulton Bridge.
One of Grimes’ fellow Democratic volunteers typically uses the granules to deter yard pests. This season, Grimes and company hope the pungent smell squashes the impulse to damage and steal the signs, though they question whether the smell will cut through the wafts from a nearby sewage plant .
Stephanie Grimes greases up campaign signs posts to deter theft on Oct. 27, in Harmar. Other people have protected their signs along the stretch of grass in other ways, including stapling the signs to plywood and fastening them with fishing line and metal posts. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
The approach is one of a handful of tactics being used across the country to stave off a wave of yard sign tampering carried out across the political spectrum in a heated election centered on the presidential contest between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris.
- Apple AirTags helped one sign owner find a dumpster filled with more than 100 stolen campaign signs in Chester County.
- An UnethicalLifeProTips subreddit member suggested attaching sponge weatherproofing strips soaked in leather dye to signs to create lasting stains on culprits’ hands.
- A bomb squad was called to check out an anti-Harris banner attached to a homemade noise-making device rigged from fishing line and shotgun shells in Virginia.
- A Harris supporter attached a written warning to signs claiming that “She rubbed her dog’s feces on this Harris sign.”
As Grimes’ friend sprays WD-40 to add a final slippery layer to the signs, a Trump supporter pulls up and asks what they’re doing. “C’mon, who doesn’t love glitter?” she jokes with him.
Grimes’ sign clean-ups have occasionally attracted the attention of passing Trump fans, including one who spoke with her while saving a tossed Trump sign from the weeds.
In Pennsylvania, stealing a political lawn sign is a misdemeanor in the third degree and can bring fines of up to $2,000. Vandalizing a lawn sign could land you up to 90 days in jail or $250 in fines. In a time when people are catching neighbors and passers-by destroying their plastic displays of allegiance on their Ring cams, the public shame of having video evidence of your crime blasted across social media is its own price to pay.
Grimes, a working mom from Oakmont northeast of Pittsburgh, puts up more signs rather than taking her opponents’ down. It was early October when a fellow committee member called her, distressed, after five Harris signs she put up the day prior were taken down for the second time. The two returned to put up 72 signs near the bridge. “We knew if we put that many they couldn’t steal them all,” she said. People started calling and asking her about the signs, relaying the joy the display gave them. “Well shoot,” said Grimes. “Now we gotta keep it up!”
As the month continued, she’d receive early morning texts from people passing the torn-down signs on their way to work. She’d return in the afternoon with new signs, tromping through the grass in her suit coat. “Get a life,” she muttered under her breath as she tossed twisted signs in a pile. “They’d probably say the same thing to me.” But the line of blue signs were garnering words of encouragement from people.
At left, Stephanie Grimes puts up signs that had been ripped down along Freeport Road, on Oct. 21, in Harmar. At right, the same location with the signs down on Oct. 27. “That’s why I keep coming out here. … Because it matters to people,” said Grimes. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
The roadside is normally known to host bald eagle watchers, but as Grimes pulled the signs from the cliffside that drops to the railroad tracks below, she became the sight to see.
With 10 days to the election, Grimes, pony tail bobbing, straightens out twisted signs and pushes them back into the ground. From the three-way intersection, passing motorists shout expletive-peppered support for Trump. “White dudes in a pickup truck?” she asks. She’s not wrong, four times in a row. “Happy First Amendment! Remember that, guys?” she yells back. As the traffic light changes, an older woman drives by and honks, giving Grimes a thumbs up as a row of little girls in the back seat crane their necks to watch.
From a nearby gravel lot, Bob Hamilton points his phone at Grimes from his SUV window, an unexpected stop on his trip to get wiper blades and wash his car. Grimes tucks her remaining signs under her armpit and marches over. “Can I help you?”
Hamilton tells her about heated arguments between neighbors over pro-Trump yard signs in Mt. Lebanon. “I’ve been through a lot of elections and I’ve never seen anything like this,” says Hamilton. “I can say a lot of it’s due to these,” he says, waving his iPhone in the air. “People do things and see things on the net and they think because we’re not face-to-face they can say things and do things they otherwise wouldn’t.”
Hamilton didn’t get involved in politics until the local primary races in 2022. He says in his community of Fox Chapel, people largely avoid political signage, but he plans to plant some a couple of days before the election. “We just got 25,000 from [Elon] Musk,” he says, referring to his local Republican network.
Hamilton is not the first person who has pulled over to record Grimes.
On Oct. 18, a man who only wanted to be identified as a Vietnam veteran approached her, phone camera rolling. He was ready to buy signs from the Monroeville GOP Victory Center to counter her plastic sea of blue, he told her. As other volunteers installed signs silently around her, Grimes — the wife of a veteran — went back and forth with the man, explaining the Oakmont Dem’s approach to political engagement. He fished a Trump sign out of the nearby bushes and installed it along the sidewalk as they talked.
Grimes slammed a trunk full of unsalvageable signs, reflecting on the interaction. “Somebody asked me why I engaged him and I was like: I needed him to know that we’re human,” she said. “Like, try to find something we can relate on, and then we can argue about that,” she added, with a laugh.
Stephanie Strasburg is a photojournalist with PublicSource who can be reached at [email protected], on Instagram @stephaniestrasburg or on Twitter @stephstrasburg.
This article first appeared on PublicSource and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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