Reporting And Writing Class Fall 2010: Bemidji Politics Strike

Bemidji Politics Strike

Signs are taking over

By Jake Kelly and Zuzka Tomcikova

story #5

The race for the office of mayor is coming to a close in Bemidji. All over the BSU campus and neighboring houses it’s difficult to find a yard without a sign for a candidate for mayor. One could tell the top candidates in the election solely based on the number of signs spread out across Bemidji. “A lady came and knocked on my door about a month ago and asked if she could put a sign up,” said BSU construction management major Matt Larson. “I didn’t realize that it would be here for over a month and I’m kind of sick of having it there.”

Hundreds of these signs have been put up on rented property belonging to students, as well as owned properties of teachers, and local residents. It is understood that these signs are necessary to get the word out about a certain candidate but the volume of signs and candidacy commercials, between the competing politicians, is overwhelming. The fact that these signs are often grouped together creates a lot of clutter as far as who the candidates are and it's difficult to specify one particular candidate amongst the number of signs.

“It’s necessary because even if someone can’t see your campaigns sign you don’t want them paying attention to the opponent so you crowd the opponents sign with your own and they sort of cancel in a way,” Said Mark Schealler, a campaign volunteer for one of the Bemidji mayor candidates Jim Thompson. The people responsible for the signs are usually volunteers and not the actual candidate. They walk the streets for hours promoting their candidate's campaign. “It’s pretty exhausting work to be walking around with dozens of signs every evening,” said Schealler. “I’m not really a fan of going door to door but if it helps us win the election than I’m willing to contribute my help.”

What the candidates don’t seem to care about is that most of these yards that they’re putting signs in house students who are not full time residents of Bemidji and thus cannot vote. This upsets some people whose yards have been taken advantage of such as BSU’s Lauren Williams a junior business major who said “There was a bunch of people who came and asked to put signs up and at first I didn’t mind because I wanted to be friendly.” After a pause she said, “But now there’s ten signs in my yard and I don’t even have any say in the election.”

A look at this yard and others like it on Paul Bunyan Dr. is truly a sight as an almost uncountable number of signs scatters as far as you can see. The main placement of the signs is focused in the yards lining Paul Bunyan Dr. This is to allow the signs as much exposure as possible by being visible for passing traffic. "I drive down Paul Bunyan every day and see those signs," said Daniel Marcikowski a senior Spanish major at BSU. "I'm not a resident so I don't really care to much about the election but honestly no names really stick in my head there's too many of them to really pick one out." Most of the signs that have the name of a candidate on them are overshadowed by their competitors, who often put signs in the exact same spots as one another. This makes it impossible for someone who is driving by to even see a specific candidate leaving the residents of the area, most of whom can’t vote, to stare at theses imposing signs.

The fact that the different campaigns are basically battling for sign turf doesn’t sit well with many people including Erin Roach a junior chemistry major “I hate the signs because I can't vote and it seems like every corner is littered with a bunch of different signs and honestly it just looks horrible and it’s really annoying,” she goes on to say “I rejected at least six or seven different people from putting signs up in my yard, and I just really don’t want them there.”

Whether one is for or against the signs, their presence cannot be ignored and with the election campaigns coming to an end the yards of Bemidji will once again be sign free.