Arizona GOP: Vandals waging 'full-on assault' on Donald Trump, Joe Arpaio campaign signs

Yvonne Wingett Sanchez , The Republic | 6:14 p.m. MST November 3, 2016


The Arizona Republican Party says thousands of campaign signs, mainly those for Donald Trump and Joe Arpaio, are being damaged or destroyed. (Photo: Chad Willems)


Arizona Republican Party Chairman Robert Graham said Thursday that thousands of candidates' campaign signs, particularly those for Donald Trump and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, are either disappearing or being defaced each day.

Graham also said someone cut the wires providing phone and internet service to the party's Tucson office.

Graham described a "full-on assault" on signs for Trump and Arpaio, who appears to face his closest re-election campaign in decades.

"What about the First Amendment? Let people put their signs up, let the chips fall where they fall ... but don't do this nonsense stuff," Graham said.

Graham said he does not know who damaged the communication lines for the party's Tucson office, but he said a police report was either filed or would be filed.

"Down in our Tucson office, our Number 1 call center, they clipped the wire. They actually cut our cables lines so we couldn't use our phone lines for at least a day," he said.

A spokesperson for the Tucson Police Department said it had no immediate information about an incident pertaining to the address listed for the party's office in Tucson.

Enrique Gutierrez, a spokesman for the state Democratic Party, said the party has not seen excessive sign damage this election season. "Our complaints are, 'Why don't you have more signs.' (Trump) is not well-liked, I guess."

Graham said on one stretch of Shea Boulevard, every Arpaio campaign sign had graffiti or had been cut up. "We've had to probably replace — the ones I know about — a minimum of 1,000 (Trump) signs a day," he said.

Arpaio's campaign manager, Chad Willems, said so many of the sheriff's signs have been destroyed, the campaign has given up replacing them. He said the campaign initially put up about 1,500 signs, which can cost anywhere from $15 to $35 apiece. Many have been defaced with swastikas, drawings of penises and devil tails.


Joe Arpaio's campaign has given up replacing signs after so many were damaged or destroyed, campaign manager Chad Willems says. (Photo: Chad Willems)
"We probably have 500 left standing," Willems said. "We were keeping count and then we lost count. We’d have volunteers go out and take damaged ones down and put up other ones, but then it got to the point where it was just shoveling sand against the tide."

Arthur Whipple, 60, of Maricopa, said he stopped at 71st Avenue and Thunderbird Road on Thursday to fix Trump signs that had been torn down.

"When I picked one up to try to put it back up, I got this — I don't know what it was — all over my hand," he said. "I'm still trying to get it off. ... I've been using turpentine and mineral oils, I don't know what it is."

Whipple said he called Peoria police, the Sheriff's Office and the state Republican Party.

"It's starting to be malicious where they're booby-trapping the signs so you get this stuff all over," Whipple said.

Willems said sign vandalism is worse than four years ago, when the campaign advertised a reward for information about those damaging signs.

"Last time it happened closer to the election," he said. "This year, it happened right away and they were getting torn down and defaced in places we wouldn't normally see like north Scottsdale, Mesa ... Sun City. There's only so much money and time you can put into replacing those until it just kind of becomes a lost cause."

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/...lism/93246884/