Just when you thought that this was a straight-up issues based election, the dirty tactics have come out. On my way to work this morning I noticed an Anthony MacDonald election sign on the corner of Willow Rd. and Imperial Rd. extremely defaced with black paint. Although election signs from all four major parties were on that corner, only Progressive Conservative MacDonald's were vandalized. Of course vandalizing election signs is not a new sport, and even targeted partisan vandalism has been a tool of select delinquent politicos in Guelph in the recent past. It's a sad statement that seemingly well-meaning people of different political persuasions can't discuss the issues without either the extremists or the pranksters making it harder.
The MacDonald sign at the corner of Willow and Imperial was replaced by this afternoon, as shown above, but as fate would have it, I didn't have to go far to find more vandalized signs.
This one was near the entrance of the West End Rec Centre, and as you can see...
...They got both sides.
This one was on the corner of Imperial Rd. and Paisley St. Again, other party signs are on the same corner, but they are virtually unscathed. The closest thing I could find to a damaged sign amongst the other three main parties was this James Gordon sign, which seems to have been purposefully bent in the middle, as if someone might have kicked it, but that's hardly conclusive.
I didn't go any further south than Paisley, but along Paisley, where there are a number of MacDonald signs on the lawns of private homes, and it seems the vandals didn't head to, or come from, the east on Paisley. Again, the other parties' signs remained untouched.
Hopefully this is an isolated case, and hopefully this isn't anything more than bored/drunk/demented souls looking for a "good time" and not a political statement meant to intimidate or threaten MacDonald or potential MacDonald voters. We claim to hate politics as usual and say we want discourse that aims hire, but sadly this has become politics as usual. As we head into the home stretch of the campaign let's all of us try to rise above this, shall we?
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2 comments:
Adam
You seem to have fallen victim to the same error as Mr Tracey in his Merc article.
Sampling errors (and responding to squeaky / sulky wheels) leads to false conclusions and potentially damaging innuendo. Would you defend that your sample photos are a representative / random sample that represent the entire city and the entire campaign (to date)? If not then your conclusions are indefensible.
If there were pictures that convey the exact opposite of your current proposition, would you be interested? Or are you satisfied with sampling-bias reporting?
Given your diligent candidate interviews and commentary I am dismayed that this element of bias has crept into your otherwise laudatory efforts
Anon,
Not sure what it is your trying to say exactly. The point of the post was to highlight the sign damage I saw along one street in my neighbourhood and speak out against it. I would not say they're representative of the city, or even the entire west of Guelph.
So are you trying to say that there's been damage to MacDonald signs in other areas of the city? Or that other party's signs have also been vandalized. If you have photos of one or both, then yes, I would be interested in seeing them and would be happy to post them on my blog as an example of how not to campaign.
Thanks,
AAD
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