Candidates' signs keep disappearing in Mesa

When someone recently asked her if she's still in the Mesa City Council race, or if the race was even on, Dina Higgins knew something was missing. Literally, as it turned out.

About 75 percent of the District 5 candidate's 250 tiny yard-size campaign signs dotting street corners in east Mesa have disappeared over the campaign season. Higgins said early on, she contacted the city clerk's office to find out if this is common and was told that it is.

She tried contacting police to file a complaint.

"But we just played phone tag and I didn't bother to follow up," Higgins said, adding it's "frustrating and expensive" to keep putting back signs.

"Do these things happen all the time? Or is this the new prank of 2008?" Higgins wondered.

Not that she's sure what might have happened to her blue and red advertisements.

"Who knows, it could be random kids or neighbors sick of seeing them," she said.

Higgins, who faces Phil Austin in the May 20 runoff, said she's lost about $900 worth of signs. And hers were only $3 apiece, unlike other candidates' bigger $50 ones, she said. She's ordered new signs to replace the missing ones.

At first she thought wind might be the culprit, but she knew it was someone's handiwork after two of her signs, tightly interwoven in a fence, disappeared.

"We had to work to get them in there with pliers, the whole frame and everything. It couldn't have gone flying away," she said.

Hers aren't the only ones gone, however. Austin has missed some, too. "Oh gosh, about 30 to 40 percent of them are missing or torn down," Austin said, adding that other candidates had warned him that this might happen.

"Some people may have thought that the campaign was over and people just took them off," he said.

He's ordering some more, too, to stay in the public eye, ahead of early balloting.

The city's code compliance director, Mike Renshaw, said he hasn't heard of any complaints, but often neighbors get tired of seeing the signs and take it on themselves to remove them.

"We see it in every election," Renshaw said.

Vice Mayor Claudia Walters, who recently lost in the mayoral election, came up with creative reasons. "Oh, people use them on construction sites or for target shooting - could be anything," Walters said.

As for Higgins, she said it's a quirky lesson learned.

"Who knew people would take out someone else's signs," Higgins said. "I just didn't expect it."