OAKLAND — A candidate for the Legislature said that he was upset when he woke up Monday morning to find that road signs supporting his candidacy had disappeared from 32 area yards — including his own.
When Mark André, who is running to unseat Democratic incumbent Henry Beck in his bid to represent parts of Oakland and Waterville in House District 76, drove into town to get breakfast he noticed that signs were missing from the front yards of several of his supporters.
“I made a couple of phone calls and realized that the signs had been stolen,” he said on Friday.
André, who filed a report Monday morning with the Oakland Police Department, said that the cost of replacing the signs goes beyond their sticker price of roughly five dollars each.
“It’s an attack on a candidate’s time,” he said. “Those signs represent a personal relationship that a candidate has built with individual people.”
He estimated that it took two or three days to figure out exactly where the signs had been stolen from, revisit each of those homes, and ask for permission to replace them.
A total of 34 André signs were taken from Oakland yards facing Ten Lots Road, Oak Street, Rice Rips Road, Mayflower Heights Drive, Kennedy Memorial Drive and Fairfield Street.
Other signs, some of which expressed support for Beck, were untouched. According to police, who are conducting an ongoing investigation, 28 of the stolen signs were found alongside the driveway of a residence on South Alpine Street before the thefts had been reported.
André said that two signs unrelated to either campaign were also found at the location.
Beck said that he had not heard about the incident until called by the Morning Sentinel Friday.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “I hopes he gets to the bottom of it.”
Beck said that he doubted the incident was done by his supporters.
“I would be highly surprised,” he said.
“I don’t think anyone benefits from this kind of thing.”
Rice Rips Road resident Dick Pierce, 82, said that he was upset when he woke up Monday to find that a theft had happened on his property.
An active community member who spent nine years on the Town Council, Pierce said that the theft was highly unusual.
“It’s the first time I can remember running into something like this,” Pierce said.
“I know of times when someone complained that their sign was missing but it wasn’t a full-fledged assault like this was.”
André asked that supporters missing signs from their yards email him at Andreforhouse76@yahoo.com for a replacement.
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