Democrat Legislative Candidate Says Someone Attacked Her Campaign Signs…With A Knife!

Since we’re in the political silly season, of course we’re going to have people getting overwrought about their campaign signs. Because people love campaign signs. They love putting that little notification of which team they’re supporting out on their lawn. It’s like wearing your favorite sports team’s jersey.  You’re making a statement. And when they feel someone else has been disrespecting that statement, look out.

So every election cycle we get some story about dastardly acts of law sign violence. The first such accusations in North Dakota so far to my knowledge anyway) come from District 3 Senate candidate Lisa Wolf, a Democrat, who claimed on her campaign Facebook page that someone has been attacking her campaign signs with knives.

Scary!

Fielding calls all morning? Wolf is a teacher – as she notes in the posting – so when exactly was she taking these campaign-related phone calls? During classroom time? That’s not kosher.

Or was she maybe not really getting phone calls?

Later in the comment section, Wolf expands her sign-knifing theory into a larger narrative about Republicans and their violent rhetoric. Apparently, Minot Republicans are just a couple of violent symbols away from mass murder or something:

There are a couple of reasons to be skeptical.

First, I’m guessing the damage to Wolf’s signs probably has more to do with the 40mph winds (and higher) we’ve been having in Minot lately. There have been multiple high wind warnings from the weather service for this area of late. I’ve spoken to some of the other candidates in the area, and they say they’ve been spending a lot of time replacing signs damaged in the winds.

Applying Occam’s Razor, I think the simplest explanation for Wolf’s sign problem is probably the weather. Not some crazed knife-wielding partisan.

Second, Wolf has a history of making wild and unsubstantiated accusations. When Wolf was in the Legislature previously, she tried to make a report to capitol security in Bismarck that tea party demonstrators outside the capitol were harassing her. In reality, they’d just tried to hand her some literature. Nothing came of her complaint because the “harassment” was apparently that Wolf had to interact with somebody who disagreed with her.

Regardless, welcome to the crazy time. Be prepared for more campaign sign conspiracy theories ahead.