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Community Corner

Baldassare Losquadro Brookhaven Highway Signs

I am a campaign manager with a confession: I very much dislike campaign signs all over the neighborhood. I think it is ugly and polluting and I frown at the sight of a street corner littered with candidates’ signs. With that said, my next confession is that as part of election season, I personally helped erect a modest 25 4x4 signs for my candidate, Lori Baldassare (running for Brookhaven Highway Superintendent). I then photographed every one of the 25 signs to justify for my own memories, that they didn’t look bad or overly obtrusive; bizarre, yes I know. These signs and posts, purchased with campaign donations, were placed in locations by myself and other volunteers with a plan to remove all of them just after Election Day. There were only 25 of them and they stretched across the very large town of Brookhaven; an amount that pales in comparison to most candidates.   But as of today, EVERY ONE of Lori Baldassare’s signs has been vandalized; the most likely culprit would be the competitor. So you’re going to say this happens every election and it goes both ways regardless of the political side of the fence you sit on, right? My response is still ‘BALONEY’. To me, the act of removing, slashing, vandalizing, and blatantly covering your competitor’s signs is juvenile and asinine. Even more arrogant is the attitude of entitlement that because you are the Supervisor of the Town or the Highway Superintendent and in your mind you have the most ‘authority’ over the land use on the side of the roadway, and you are entitled to remove competitors’ signs and litter the town with your own – hundreds of them. This is a shameless behavior to me and I don’t understand why it continues election after election.
Lori and I and our volunteers are a small but quality operation. We know exactly who does what in our campaign and we have never nor will we ever promote the vandalism of anyone’s signs. Sadly, I don’t think the competition can say the same though especially since once our signs were slashed down, the competitors signs appeared on most of our remaining poles. His signs were even placed directly obstructing ours. Can one be any more arrogant?
So if you wonder why you are not seeing Lori Baldassare signs, this is the reason – ALL VANDALIZED and taken down by those who are obviously intimidated by Lori’s campaign.  At every corner where you see 10+ candidate signs, even the small signs for Lori have been plucked out. Campaign funds are public record so it’s no secret that the current Highway Superintendent (Lori’s competitor) has raised hundreds of thousands in donations specifically from unions and highway vendors. I personally attribute this to ‘fear-based-loyalty’. So clearly he can obviously afford to plaster the town with a bazillion ugly green signs (and then have Highway crews clean them all up). Is this the character of a person you want in town government? Signs do not win races. However, character might. We, in Lori’s campaign, have higher ethics and do not remove other people’s signs. On November 5th, help us send a clear message that residents are smarter than to be bought off with campaign signs! Vote Lori Baldassare for Highway Superintendent! Sign wars are simply ugly.

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