With two weeks to go before Election Day, political affiliations aren’t the only thing on display in Northern Virginia….
That’s not a bomb, it’s a tactical sign protection system
Officials in Leesburg responded to concerns about an “an alarm near a campaign sign that some feared was an explosive,” NBCWashington reports.
On Saturday, a family who lives in the Woodlea Manor subdivision called the sheriff’s office after their children began exploring the fishing line trip wires and found the devices. The family worried the devices might be explosive. The fire marshal responded too.
A sheriff’s office spokesman wrote to News4, “The first marshal determined what was attached to a tree was a legal device intended to be loud if the nearby sign was disturbed.”
But seriously, people are taking signs
Arlington County appears to be ablaze with recrimination amid a raft of sign-related shenanigans. ARLnow corroborated reports that multiple “Harris-Walz signs were taken from front yards in the Old Glebe and Rivercrest neighborhoods” on October 9. Trump supporters say that in fact it’s their signs disappearing: “Not a day goes by that I don’t hear from Republican voters about stolen, damaged or vandalized Republican yard signs,” Arlington GOP bigwig Matthew Hurtt tells the outlet. Hurtt told WUSA last week: “Over the weekend, a woman in a red Miata stole a yard sign out of a right of way in North Arlington,” costing Washingtonian valuable work minutes as we tried to picture how anyone could fit a yard sign in a Miata. Anyway! Don’t steal signs! Even if they resemble beloved mid-’80s album covers!
Wait, though, is that your face on a sign?
Paul Weiss, a candidate for Arlington’s school board, appears to have upset the unwritten aesthetics of county political signs by slapping a photo of himself on his signs, ARLnow reports:
“I put my picture out there because of Arlington’s wonderful small-town culture,” Weiss said. He hopes that the public will “place my name with the face of a friendly and informed neighbor whom they may have encountered” across the community.
Let’s check in on the barriers near JD Vance’s house in Alexandria
Remember those things? The ones the US Secret Service had installed in August? The ones some entity—no one has fessed up yet—had painted after Vance’s neighbors in the overwhelmingly blue Del Ray neighborhood covered them with chalked pro-Democratic ticket slogans? Well, guess what, now they carry some new messages, like so:
Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.
