Lawn Signs
We have all seen them. The ubiquitous lawn signs for political candidates that pop up all over town during a political race. Our campaign is clearly also using them with a bit of a difference.
Our campaign successfully used lawn signs to give us visibility and drive traffic to our website, where the real meat of our campaign can be found. We were bold and had signs made that were at the largest size limit permissible by Vestal town code. We included all the candidate names in order to reduce the number of signs in the yards of supportive residents. For you who have seen our big, blue signs can you imagine if we had three signs at every location, one for each of us? We felt one large sign was the best approach. We also went full high tech by including a QR code that connects to our website directly. Just aim the camera of your mobile phone at the code block and tap the indicator that comes up. Voila! There is the website! We chose sky blue because we liked the color. It just happens to indicate we are on the ticket under the Democratic party, though you will see on our website that we believe all issues in Vestal to be non-partisan. I like having lawn signs indicate the party of the candidate, don’t you?
Is stark contrast the other candidates for Supervisor went with smaller, more traditional lawn signs. Both John Schaffer and Ted Wolf are using signs that have a green & gold color scheme and their name in big easy-to-read letters. This brings questions to my mind.
Do they think having green & gold will fool anyone into thinking they are more pro-Vestal than we are? Are they hiding their party affiliation for some reason? They both did it, so do they both think the same way? Will they govern any differently from each other?
I have been told that having the name of the candidate in big letters helps people remember their name at the polls. I prefer to believe that voters are more savvy than that. What does it say about a candidate who feels that they will get the vote because the voter remembers the name on a lawn sign and not much else? This sounds degrading to the intelligence of Vestal voters if you ask me. Mr. Schaffer boasted during the primary that he has 500 lawn signs around Vestal (while also saying our 200 signs were “littering” the town) so he must have a low opinion of Vestal voters. The number of signs did not help him get more than around 30% of the primary votes, so how effective were they really? Well, he’s trying it again and already has populated the town with his armada of signs. You see them everywhere, but do you really want to? Is that really necessary?
I don’t want to get into the fact that some of his are on Vestal town land, something that is not allowed by town code.
I’ll finish by going back to our signs. I am proud of them for many reasons. We collaborated on the design where all three candidates provided input and criticism to create the final version you see around town. They are highly visible, so more effective in drawing attention briefly. The names are small and hard to read in passing, but we only have one displayed per residential property instead of three! We went high tech with a QR code that drives traffic to our website. The design easily transferred onto a t-shirt (have you seen us and our supporters wearing them?) and coffee mug which can be yours for a small donation! Most of all I am proud to say each sign is in a location owned by a private resident of Vestal who is voluntarily displaying the sign to support our candidacy. We have completely adhered to town code, as is our way.
Thank you for reading my rant on lawn signs. And please visit this site again as I will be adding my opinions and stance about other issues in our beautiful Town of Vestal!
Best to you and yours - Glenn R. Miller