Failed D.C. Candidates Miss the Signs

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IT'S NOW BEEN SIX WEEKS since Ward 4 D.C. Council member Adrian Fenty coasted through the November general election and 14 weeks since the Sept. 12 primary. The 2006 District election season won't end in a ceremonial sense until Fenty's Jan. 2 swearing-in festivities. But yet, some candidates won't let their doomed electoral dreams die a dignified death.

According to the D.C. election code, the campaign of one-time mayoral candidate and outgoing Ward 5 D.C. Council member Vincent Orange, at right, is violating the law for still having signs up on public property around town. When Express contacted the D.C. Department of Public Works — which has oversight over errant campaign signs on public property — a representative said that candidates had until 30 days after the November general election to clean-up their signs. Obviously, the month-long clean-up window has ended.

District officials could, in theory, penalize Orange's campaign $35 per sign. While this writer has noticed a handful of candidate signs still up on telephone poles and traffic signals in random parts of the District, it seems from informal walking surveys in recent weeks, Orange's post-campaign clean-up has missed a few spots.

Last night on a walk through Cleveland Park and McLean Gardens, this writer counted 11 Orange signs tacked up on Idaho Avenue, Lowell, Macomb and Newark streets NW, plus 33rd Place NW, 34th and 39th streets NW. (We've plotted our route on a Wayfaring map posted on the jump.)

But Orange isn't the only offending candidate.

We spotted two signs for failed GOP Ward 3 Council member candidate Theresa Conroy at Lowell and 36th streets NW and one sign for decimated Republican mayoral candidate David Kranich that shares a telephone pole with an Orange sign across the street from the Metropolitan Police Department's 2nd Division headquarters.

If you see offending campaign signs, you can report them to the DPW, but the department requested that citizens simply take them down themselves.

» "Guidelines for Placing and Removing Campaign Posters" [DCBOEE]

Photos by Michael Grass/Express