Burnt Orange Report

Dean's Announcement, Sign Wars

By Byron LaMasters

Great announcement speech by Howard Dean. I really only have one complaint... not about the speech itself, but that the campaign folks took so long to get that annoying Green Party sign covered up. It may seem insignificant, but it's important. Imagine that someone had never heard of Howard Dean before, and that speech was their first exposure to him. What would they think? That Howard Dean is supported by the Green Party? I don't know if the sign was there to protest Dean, or support him, but to me, it gave the impression that the Green Party supported Howard Dean. Now, that probably wasn't the intent of the sign, but nonetheless, it reflects poorly upon Dean. If the first thing that people hear about Dean is that he's supported by Greens, probably about 90% of voters would see that as a negative. For Republicans and independents, the affiliation could easily associate him with the "lunatic fringe", and many Democrats, like myself, see affiliation with the Greens in a negative manner.

I had a similar experience to this at our candidate rally at UT last October. As the emcee, I saw my job as consisting of three things: 1) introducing candidates, 2) cheerleading and 3) sign control. Whenever a Green / Republican (aka. Grepublican, they're all the same) sign got in the way, I would send several volunteers to block it out with a Democratic sign. My theory is that they have the right to have their signs, but we have the right to block them out when there's more of us than there are of them. Unfortunately, the event received poor coverage in the Daily Texan, because of reporter Kris Banks childish decision to write about the sign battle instead of the real story... that all the Democratic candidates came to UT and spoke on student issues. However, the event did receive good television coverage, for which I was pleased. Regardless, at every event like this, especially when it's televised, you absolutely must have an organized volunteer team willing to block out any unfavorable signs quickly.