Rubin: Lawn Sign Mania

Behold the awesome power of lawn signs.

An uncommitted voter is motoring south on Orchard Lake Road in Farmington Hills. Just past 12 Mile, at the onramp to westbound I-696, there's a standard plastic-coated paper placard for Republican and enthusiastic nerd Rick Snyder.

Maybe that's all it takes. Maybe the mere sight of a three-color "Hire Rick for Michigan" sign is enough to plant the thought: "The gubernatorial primary is Tuesday! It's Snyder! He's my guy!" But just in case, six yards from the first one, there's another Snyder sign. And beyond that, barely across the freeway, there's sign No. 3.

Surely, the third sign will clinch the deal. Only the steeliest and most rigorously trained among us -- a spy, perhaps, or a CPA -- could hope to resist the psychological imprint.

Wait, though ... amid the weeds, there's a fourth sign, 19 feet past No. 3. It's almost unfair. And then, 19 feet further, a fifth.

Our uncommitted voter has lost all semblance of free will. By the next afternoon, he's wearing thick glasses and a pocket protector, knocking on doors in Dearborn Heights, preaching the gospel of wonkhood: Hire Rick for Michigan!

Or, um, maybe not.

Maybe it's all just political litter.

Signs are everywhere

Take that I-696 exit and before you merge onto the freeway, you'll pass four signs for Paul Welday, one of the Republican frontrunners for U.S. Congress in the 9th District. His campaign says it's about name recognition.

A few miles away, an 83-year-old has a Welday billboard in her yard on busy Farmington Road -- along with a billboard for his principal opponent, Andrew "Rocky" Raczkowski. She says it's about loyalty.

Just across Eight Mile, Wayne County Commissioner Burton Leland wants every candidate everywhere to sign a pledge to not use lawn signs. He says it's about saving money and the environment.

Signs are "all about ego. They're a waste," he contends, and they ultimately wind up in landfills along with their wire stands. Instead of spending money on signs and man-hours on pounding them into the dirt, he says, he and his team spent cash and time on cleanup projects in his district.

Anyone who wants to proclaim their loyalty in his district can tape a campaign poster in a window -- one side of a traditional four-fold mailing.

"Put something in a mailbox," says Leland, 62, a former state senator and representative.

"Go knock on doors. There are better ways."

Corners market signs

Granted, that's easier to say when you've represented the same tidy area in various offices for 30 years. Welday's district stretches from Oakland Township to Waterford to Royal Oak.

"Signs give you name recognition," says Sue Brams, Welday's campaign director. She ordered 2,000 of the standard 14-by-22s online for $3,800, and only a few dozen are still in search of turf, be it public or private ground.

"If you win (the primary), you hope that people will put them away and bring them back out in a month," she says, not that most people do. If you lose, most cities give you 48 hours to come get 'em -- though experience shows that plenty remain unclaimed.

Closing in on Election Day, they crowd one another on busy corners like multicolored chicks in a nest. Murphy! Hathaway! Gregory! Ryan! Verdi! The who and the what blend into the landscape -- though at Peggy McDonough's house, the two large boards stand out.

Raczkowski is an old friend of hers. Welday has known her son since high school.

"I don't care who wins," McDonough says.

She'll vote Republican in November either way. And she didn't need big signs to figure that out.

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