Thomas MacMillan Photos
Alderman Greg Morehead said he was just doing his constituents a service when police found him with an opponent’s campaign signs stashed in the trunk of his car.
Police, summoned by an opposing candidate who had trailed Morehead through the neighborhood, called it “larceny,” according to Morehead. They forced the alderman to remove a handful of his opponent’s placards from his car.
Morehead said the police had it wrong, that he was only removing signs that his opponents have been placing on lawns without permission, or those that were in the public right-of-way.
The candidate spy work and police intervention took place last Thursday night on Henry Street in Ward 22, where Morehead and Lisa Hopkins, along with Jeanette Morrison and Cordelia Thorpe, are locked in a heated four-way campaign to be the next representative from the neighborhood, which comprises parts of Dixwell and Yale. The ward is the scene of perennial campaign disputes; races between Hopkins and Morehead, who are across-the-street neighbors, have been known to get personal.
Accusations and counter-accusations about campaign signs also flew in Dwight’s Ward 2, where Doug Bethea and Frank Douglass are vying to represent the Dwight neighborhood.
The placard kerfuffles are a sign of the times, so to speak, as candidates sprint towards the Sept 13. Democratic primary in what has become the most active election year in recent memory.
Susie Voigt, chair of the Democratic Town Committee, said the two wards’ kerfuffles are isolated incidents. “People are doing pretty well out there, given that there are 19 [aldermanic] primaries and four people running for mayor,” she said. “In the big picture, people are being respectful of each other.”
Hopkins at home with a campaign sign. It was still up at last check.
Admiral To Henry
Hopkins said she noticed Morehead and his car on Henry Street after 9 p.m. on Thursday night, as she was canvassing the neighborhood. She believed he was “making rounds” and taking down signs. She ran over to Admiral Street, where she said she has several signs up.
“I got him on Admiral Street,” Hopkins said. She spotted Morehead, who “doubled back” to Henry, where she caught up to him and confronted him.
“I saw her,” Morehead recalled. “She was following me around. I’m like, this is ridiculous. I knew it was going to be drama.”
“I stopped him,” Hopkins recalled. “I said, ‘You’re not supposed to be stealing signs.’”
Hopkins said Morehead’s behavior was “ridiculous” and “unethical.” “He says he’s running a positive race, and this dude is stealing signs.”
Reached after the incident, Morehead said he wasn’t “stealing” anything. He was simply removing signs that his constituents had asked him to take down, he said.
He said as he’s been out canvassing, several people have told him that Morrison signs had appeared overnight next to the Morehead signs already on their property. He said the homeowners asked him to remove the signs. He said he doesn’t know why they didn’t just remove them themselves.
“The residents know that they can call on me for everything from signs being placed illegally to me cutting down trees this week. I don’t mind being there for my constituents,” Morehead wrote in a text message.
Morehead said he was also removing signs Thursday night that had been illegally placed in the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street, which is public property. He said he took them down the same way he would have removed trash if he found it on the city’s right-of-way. He said he didn’t bother calling the city to remove them because all workers were so busy with hurricane clean-up.
On Thursday night after confronting Morehead, Hopkins waved some police officers down, she said.
“I explained to the cops that I was taking them down at people’s request,” Morehead said.
The police told him it was “larceny,” Morehead said. “That’s untrue.” The signs were either on public property or he had permission to remove them, he said.
Morehead said he took the “four or five signs” out of his car, at the corner of Ashmun and Henry, at an officer’s request. “He just asked me to leave them right there. I left all of them there right on the grass.”
Morrison, to whose campaign those signs belong, said she has seen a large number of her signs disappear. One day recently, her campaign put up 40 signs and saw that only three were still up the next day, she said. “It looks pretty suspicious.”
She said her campaign has never put any signs on private property without the explicit permission of the property owner. She acknowledged that she has put her signs up on the strip between the sidewalk and the street, but said she was following Morehead’s example.
“Actually, I kind of followed his lead,” she said. “He’s the incumbent.” She said she figured Morehead wouldn’t do something illegal.
Morehead said his campaign has not placed any signs on public property anywhere. “No I have not. Come on,” he said. “The signs that I have put up have been for residents.”
University Place
Across town in Dwight, campaign supporters recounted a similar dispute. They didn’t call the cops.
Frank Douglass supporter Christine Bartlett-Jones, who lives on University Place, said she caught candidate Doug Bethea removing Douglass signs from a neighbor’s lawn, behind a fence.
It was Thursday Aug. 25 at 9:45 a.m., she said. “I was eating my oatmeal. I see someone in my neighbor’s yard. I work from home so I’m always looking.”
Bartlett-Jones said she went outside and confronted the man. He turned, and she recognized him as Bethea. They argued, and he swore at her, she said. He took the Douglass signs and replaced them with one of his own, she said.
Later that afternoon, Bethea came back to apologize, Bartlett-Jones said.
“I’ve been removing his signs from in front of my signs,” Bethea said in an interview. “I believe my sign looks better than his anyway.”
He said the Douglass campaign has been going around putting its signs in front of Bethea’s and taking down his signs in the middle of the night.
“I don’t have a problem with it because lawn signs don’t vote,” Bethea said.
Bethea said he had taken down a Douglass sign under a tree outside a house on University Place, but he hadn’t entered private property to do it.
“People want to yell and scream and say things about me, I ain’t got time,” he said. “I love Frank Douglass to death. I have no negative bone in my body. I’m too much of a role model.”
Bethea declined to speak about the alleged confrontation with Bartlett-Jones. “I’m not going to keep on talking about this lawn sign thing. I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten all day. I’m going to go home and look at my lawn sign.”
Douglass said his campaign has not been putting its signs up in front of Bethea’s. “That’s an outright lie. I don’t play those games. … I’m trying to keep on a high road and run a clean race.”
“Signs are not important,” he said. “What’s important are the votes.”
It would be great if the NHI got a thorough legal interpretation of this matter. If its illegal to place signs on public property, then why is removing them larceny and not just cleaning up discarded material (i.e. litter) ?
As far as signs on private property...grow up people...leave private property alone.