The Longest Yard

This time of year, two things come up - molehills and yard signs. Molehills frustrate me more, so let's talk about this year's crop of yard signs.

The big thing I note this year is the rainbow of colors that have cropped up. For the past five years or so, everything has been red, white, and/or blue, with the dramatic exception of Ron Sims' yellow and black number a few years back. This year, there is a plethora of shades - oranges, teals, and purples among others. There is a lot of blue in the signs, and the few that I've seen using reds have been for Democrats.

Also missing, or at least severely reduced, is the "R" on the signs, which has been diminishing in size over the past few elections to the point of extinction. Lot of GOPs, though, in the hopes that the voters will think its a new party. If that doesn't work, they're going to call themselves the Whigs.

A lot of symbols as well. I mentioned the fighter jet earlier, but there are also a lot of scales and gavels for all the judge candidates. Scales speak out to "justice", while the gavels to "punishment". No one has put an orca on their sign yet, but it is only a matter of time.

At the governor's level, Rossi has recycled his design from four years back - yellow letters on a dark blue background, the "Dino" in a friendly script, an mere autograph, while the Rossi is full caps, heavy as the full force of the government. Gregoire has a lighter shade of blue with a highlight of red and a thinner serif typeface, but goes by "Chris", perhaps in hopes of concealing her gender from people who would be confused by the R/GOP switchup (And is "Dino" his given name? Does Chris have a middle name? The web is noticeably light on giving full names for either campaign).

And there already seems to be a victory in the yard sign war - the triumph of the traditional paper wrapped around a stick version. We have seen a lot of the plastic on wire-frame ones last time, and they always struck me as more difficult to place than one of those single-stake relics. Its good to see the old-fashioned signs are proliferating this time.

Already this riot of color is blossoming in the public spaces, along the road mediums and in the unclaimed spaces at the corners. Nothing has shown up in front of people's real houses, mind you. That war is just beginning.

More later,