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Ottawa’s about to be festooned with election signs now that the city’s rule against hammering them in on public ground is lapsing Saturday at midnight, even if signs posted on public property don’t do a campaign all that much good.
Well-funded campaigns cover a riding with signs partly as a conspicuous display of their resources. Poorly funded campaigns try to keep up so they don’t look like broke losers. But signs on public property aren’t as useful to a campaign as ones on lawns and in windows.
“I think a lawn sign is probably to familiarize voters with your name. That’s the first reason to have a lawn sign, is to get your name out there where people can see it,” says Michael McNeil, who’s managing Conservative Damian Konstantinakos’s campaign in Ottawa Centre.
(McNeil’s worked on campaigns for decades, beginning with Lincoln Alexander when he was a teenager and starting in Ottawa with legendary MP Walter Baker. Among the half-dozen campaigns he’s helmed was Larry O’Brien’s successful run for mayor in 2006.)
Second, McNeil says, a sign is useful for supplying contact information. Not all campaigns put websites or phone numbers on their signs because they worry about cluttering the layout, but McNeil believes it’s a waste of an opportunity if you don’t give potential supporters a way to get in touch.
And third, signs on private property “give a voter the opportunity to show their support. A donation is a quiet way to support a candidate … but if they put a sign on their lawn this is a more vocal way to tell the neighbours, ‘I’m a Conservative and this is who I’m supporting’,” McNeil says.
Signs on public property — which, in Ottawa, are only allowed 30 days before the Oct. 19 election — don’t say anything about a candidate’s level of support, which is why it’s easy to dismiss them as just so much garbage advertising.
McNeil agrees that’s a problem. “Quite frankly, the more signs you have, the worse it is. People look at it and say, ‘You’re littering the landscape.’ And I know it’s only for 30 days or for 60 days, but people get irritated,” McNeil says.
Vancouver bans election signs on public property other than designated postering spots, as if they were ads for downtown club concerts. If you put a sign in a forbidden location they’ll confiscate it and charge you an “impound fee” of $100-plus to get it back.
Toronto allows signs on public property but candidates have to register with the city and put down a deposit of $250, to compensate the city for dealing with potential complaints. Candidates get dinged $25 for each mis-placed sign there.
Ottawa’s not quite a free-for-all, but it’s much more permissive. The citywide sign war is the result.
Public-property signs are more likely to get damaged than ones on lawns and more likely to stay that way unless someone on the campaign notices. The cost of replacing a single sign isn’t much but it can add up: A thousand lawn signs printed in two colours will run about $4,000, but bigger signs are both more attractive targets and more expensive.
There’s a good chance that any given election sign you see, anywhere in the country, came from the factory of Lakefront Graphix in Mississauga. They make signs for everyone: John Baird, Jack Layton, Michael Ignatieff and Elizabeth May have all bought signs from Lakefront. So have both Konstantinakos and his Ottawa Centre rival, New Democrat Paul Dewar, and literally thousands of other candidates.
The company began cornering the market in the 1990s by undercutting competitors on price, after a chat owner Steven Baron had with a dog-walking friend in High Park one day.
“I was in the sign business and he was in politics and he said to me, ‘You know, this is something you should get into’,” Baron says. He got some vendors’ price lists. “They were ripping them off — or at least it looked that way. So I decided we would take a stab at it.”
Politicians like very quick turnarounds on their orders and high-quality materials they can reuse, Baron says, but plastic corrugated signs are recyclable if necessary.
And on Oct. 20, when campaigns are responsible for removing all the signs they put in, that’ll be an important quality for almost all of them.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
Well-funded campaigns cover a riding with signs partly as a conspicuous display of their resources. Poorly funded campaigns try to keep up so they don’t look like broke losers. But signs on public property aren’t as useful to a campaign as ones on lawns and in windows.
“I think a lawn sign is probably to familiarize voters with your name. That’s the first reason to have a lawn sign, is to get your name out there where people can see it,” says Michael McNeil, who’s managing Conservative Damian Konstantinakos’s campaign in Ottawa Centre.
(McNeil’s worked on campaigns for decades, beginning with Lincoln Alexander when he was a teenager and starting in Ottawa with legendary MP Walter Baker. Among the half-dozen campaigns he’s helmed was Larry O’Brien’s successful run for mayor in 2006.)
Second, McNeil says, a sign is useful for supplying contact information. Not all campaigns put websites or phone numbers on their signs because they worry about cluttering the layout, but McNeil believes it’s a waste of an opportunity if you don’t give potential supporters a way to get in touch.
And third, signs on private property “give a voter the opportunity to show their support. A donation is a quiet way to support a candidate … but if they put a sign on their lawn this is a more vocal way to tell the neighbours, ‘I’m a Conservative and this is who I’m supporting’,” McNeil says.
Signs on public property — which, in Ottawa, are only allowed 30 days before the Oct. 19 election — don’t say anything about a candidate’s level of support, which is why it’s easy to dismiss them as just so much garbage advertising.
McNeil agrees that’s a problem. “Quite frankly, the more signs you have, the worse it is. People look at it and say, ‘You’re littering the landscape.’ And I know it’s only for 30 days or for 60 days, but people get irritated,” McNeil says.
Vancouver bans election signs on public property other than designated postering spots, as if they were ads for downtown club concerts. If you put a sign in a forbidden location they’ll confiscate it and charge you an “impound fee” of $100-plus to get it back.
Toronto allows signs on public property but candidates have to register with the city and put down a deposit of $250, to compensate the city for dealing with potential complaints. Candidates get dinged $25 for each mis-placed sign there.
Ottawa’s not quite a free-for-all, but it’s much more permissive. The citywide sign war is the result.
Public-property signs are more likely to get damaged than ones on lawns and more likely to stay that way unless someone on the campaign notices. The cost of replacing a single sign isn’t much but it can add up: A thousand lawn signs printed in two colours will run about $4,000, but bigger signs are both more attractive targets and more expensive.
There’s a good chance that any given election sign you see, anywhere in the country, came from the factory of Lakefront Graphix in Mississauga. They make signs for everyone: John Baird, Jack Layton, Michael Ignatieff and Elizabeth May have all bought signs from Lakefront. So have both Konstantinakos and his Ottawa Centre rival, New Democrat Paul Dewar, and literally thousands of other candidates.
The company began cornering the market in the 1990s by undercutting competitors on price, after a chat owner Steven Baron had with a dog-walking friend in High Park one day.
“I was in the sign business and he was in politics and he said to me, ‘You know, this is something you should get into’,” Baron says. He got some vendors’ price lists. “They were ripping them off — or at least it looked that way. So I decided we would take a stab at it.”
Politicians like very quick turnarounds on their orders and high-quality materials they can reuse, Baron says, but plastic corrugated signs are recyclable if necessary.
And on Oct. 20, when campaigns are responsible for removing all the signs they put in, that’ll be an important quality for almost all of them.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
