Smithtown candidate says signs vanished

As a Democratic town board candidate in heavily Republican Smithtown, Howard Knispel has a hard enough time running against two GOP incumbents.

And having dozens of roadside campaign signs ripped down by persons unknown doesn't help, Knispel said.

He said he was driving to a community event Sunday morning when he noticed about 50 placards missing along state Routes 25 and 347.

"They were there Saturday, and when I woke up Sunday to go to St. James Day, they were gone," said Knispel, who is challenging Republican incumbents Edward Wehrheim and Robert Creighton.

Knispel, 52, an attorney making his first run for town council, and Smithtown Democratic chairman Ed Maher did not accuse Republicans of tearing down the signs. Maher said no police report was filed.

Creighton and Wehrheim said their campaigns had nothing to do with it.

"I doubt that anybody working for me would do something like that because they've been told not to do that," Creighton said.

Smithtown Republican Committee chairman William Ellis said he gives party members "strict orders" not to remove signs supporting opposition candidates. "We don't take anybody's signs," he said.

Unauthorized signs, including political banners and business advertisements, are removed from state roads if they are a safety hazard or interfere with maintenance crews, said Eileen Peters, a state Department of Transportation spokeswoman. She could not say whether state workers removed Knispel's signs, but said the crews do not work on weekends.

Signs have been known to vanish before. In 2009, a Nassau judge cleared three men of petty larceny for removing campaign signs in North Valley Stream on the grounds that the signs should not have been there in the first place.

Knispel acknowledged that many of the removed signs had been in the center median of Route 347. But he does not believe a government agency removed his signs because the stakes were left behind.

"Signs are always put on public property," he said. "To me, it seems kind of odd that only my signs are the ones being gone."

He said he has enough signs to replace those that were removed, but he added, "If they take them away again, I'm not going to have enough signs for people to see."