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Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Sign Of Dirty Tricks Times: Md. State Workers Remove GOP Posters

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley ordered state highway workers to remove political campaign signs for Republican candidates during the weekend, according to GOP candidates and homeowners.

The leader of the state with the slogan of "Seize the Day Off" apparently told state employees to work on their days off, at overtime rates, according to candidates and residents along major thoroughfares in the Democratic stronghold of Montgomery County, in the Washington suburbs. Those residents told Newsmax they were surprised on Saturday when highway workers removed signs from their front yards and tossed them into a state dump truck.

“This is an absolute outrage,” said Rob Vricella, a Republican candidate for county council who confronted the workers. “I jumped up into the truck and retrieved my own signs and saw a pile of what looked like all Republican signs.”

When Vricella challenged the workers, they identified themselves as state employees who were getting overtime to remove the signs on the Democratic governor’s orders, he said.

Perhaps not coincidentally in this state regarded as one of the bluest of the blue, O’Malley is running for re-election against former Republican Gov. Bob Ehrlich (right), whom O’Malley ousted in 2006 after Ehrlich had served just one term.

A few minutes after Vricella encountered the state workers, the truck stopped in front of Charles Pelham’s house in Bethesda. His wife was working in the yard when the state workers removed Republican campaign signs from their property, despite her protests, Pelham said.

The workers told her the same story: They were acting on the Democratic governor’s orders and receiving overtime for working on Saturday and Sunday.

Candidates regularly put up signs on the medians of main roads, even though state law forbids the practice and holds offending candidates responsible for their removal. Candidates who don’t remove their signs after Election Day can be fined, although that has happened rarely, if ever.

But the state has no authority to remove signs from private property. Removal of private property without the owner’s request is theft.
More here

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maryland sucks another example of tax and spend Democrats!

Joe Price said...

The DEMs from early on decided to use every and any dirty trick they could to get elected.Think about it, we have a so-what socity. If they use dirty tricks and win, they still win and remain in power. If they lose, everyone forgets about the tricks. If action is taken against them the responsibility for the tricks is spread over hundereds and hundreds of individuals and creates hundreds of court cases that will take years to go through.In other words if you win, you win. If you get cought you still win.

Anonymous said...

"O’Malley campaign spokesman Mark Giangreco denied any gubernatorial involvement in removing the political signs."

He said, she said.

A few facts would be helpful.

Anonymous said...

That's why we need to get rid of o'malley & brown.

Anonymous said...

Please continue to provide information about this. If it's true, it's an outright attack on the system, and the public needs to be kept informed.