The man of ‘steal’ a popular costume

Some political operatives must confuse Halloween and campaign season. Because in that window of time, you’ll never hear of so many adults dressing up and acting the part of juvenile delinquents.

Every late October/early November, adults relive their Mischief Night glory days, when they were 14-year-olds sneaking out past curfew and vandalizing property. However, these grown-ups have given up toothpasting cars and toilet-papering trees for a more mature equivalent — stealing and defacing political campaign signs.

These complaints are so common now that we’ve basically given up reporting on them. After all, when one party accuses the other of stealing their signs, you know how they’re going to respond: “I’m a 58-year-old, upstanding citizen. Would I take that risk?” Or “This is just a way for my opponents to distract from the real issues.” Or best of all, “It was probably a prank by some neighborhood kids.”

That’s the most obvious, feasible answer. But now and then, the political types treat us with their tricks by way of a police report.

Such was the case in Middletown a few weeks ago, when police arrested a 50-year-old Democratic campaign worker for the theft of Republican lawn signs. According to police, the man was observed pulling over on Route 35 and placing the signs in front of an unpopular construction site as a way of associating the Republicans with the trees that were cleared. And in Brick last weekend, a complaint was signed against a Democratic council candidate caught by police with four of her opponents’ signs.

We’ll never understand the unhealthy obsession over these signs. Sure, a huge part of campaigning is developing name recognition. Especially when there’s a high-profile race for governor, a lot of people who aren’t familiar with local politics are going to check off the names they’ve heard of.

But when you see hundreds of the same signs cluttering every lawn, curb and street corner in town, will sneaking around in the middle of the night and stealing 20 of them really make a difference? Enough of a difference to counter the name recognition the campaigns will earn when the arrest is reported in the papers?

Oddly enough, the sign thieves never seem to be around when you need them. Now that the election is over, we encourage them to do us all a favor — hit the streets and take down as many as they can, as fast as they can.