The town of Gilbert, once at the center of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case on temporary signs, continues to be Ground Zero for drama on political placards, at least in Arizona.
The town was on the losing end of Reed v. Town of Gilbert, a 2015 decision from the high court that focused on content-based restrictions on signs. Ironically, perhaps, the case was about a temporary directional sign for a church as opposed to political signs.
But many attorneys and municipal officials have found, in practice, that the decision muddied the waters for them on what they can do about signs.
That has resulted in signs being embroiled in several controversies in the election cycles of the past year, extending what has become a colorful history with signs. It also had led the town to take a more hands-off approach to enforcement.
“It’s Gilbert, so anything goes,” said former Mayor Jenn Daniels, now watching from afar as CEO of a Phoenix public-affairs firm.
The eruption of incidents has included another lawsuit against the town; a town council member accused of tampering with signs; signs with required disclosure statements that included anonymity, possible pseudonyms and dead contact information; pointed and sometimes false attacks, some even against people not involved in a current election; and, just for fun, a satirist poking fun at political signs with some of his own.
Those incidents give rise to a raft of questions about what can and cannot be done about signs during a political campaign, which can explain the town’s timidity in enforcing code. Some officials think it also may be damaging to the reputation of the town, which likes to use #GilbertKindness in social-media campaigns.
The last irony comes from this: All this drama springs from a form of campaigning that may only be marginally effective, according to a Columbia University professor who has studied the issue.
How it started
Gilbert’s long, strange journey on signs began when town council passed a sign ordinance in 2005 intended to regulate the manner in which signs could be posted in public. In fact, most were banned without a permit, but the town allowed for a number of exceptions, including political signs and temporary directional signs.
Enter Clyde Reed, the pastor for the Good News Community Church, a small church without a regular building in which to meet. As a result, the church often posted temporary signs on Saturdays saying where Sunday’s meeting would be and then took them down Sunday afternoon.
The church was cited for violating the town sign code twice, and Reed sued in 2008, arguing that the code violated the church’s First and 14th amendment rights. But the town prevailed at the U.S. District Court and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals levels, which ruled that the town’s interest in regulating the signs was unrelated to the sign’s content.
The U.S. Supreme Court took up the case in 2014 and in 2015 ruled unanimously for Reed. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, wrote that the code was content based on its face because the restrictions applied were based on the sign’s contents.
Further, Thomas wrote that a “law that is content-based on its face is subject to strict scrutiny regardless of the government’s benign motive, content-neutral justification, or lack of ‘animus toward the ideas contained’ in the regulated speech.”
That left municipalities wondering just what they could do about signs, and the understanding was not helped by the fact that three other justices wrote their own concurring opinions.
“It was even worse because you have four separate opinions in favor of the result, but telling us different directions,” said Nancy Davidson, general counsel for the Arizona League of Cities and Town, a group that represents the state’s incorporated municipalities before the Legislature and provides them with technical and legal assistance.
Rene Guillen, the league’s deputy director, said cities often take the safest path — little or no enforcement — because of the lack of direction from the Supreme Court and federal law.
2021-22 campaigns
Gilbert, like most municipalities, had occasional sign dustups thereafter. One single female candidate for council in her 40s several years ago had signs suggesting she was a lesbian and therefore unfit. Vice Mayor Aimee Yentes, running in 2018 under her maiden name Aimee Rigler, had signs stolen, defaced or slashed across her face with a razor blade.
Things amped up before the 2021 election when Gilbert had a $515 million streets, transportation and infrastructure bond on the ballot. In September, signs started popping up in town in opposition to the bond, mostly tying it to Mayor Brigette Peterson’s “liberal agenda.”
Arizona campaign-finance law requires political signs to have a disclosure statement declaring who paid for the sign and giving a contact number or website. The first signs against the bond merely indicated they were paid for by a private citizen. Calls to the accompanying phone number went unanswered.
Thus, the town pulled at least 57 signs on the grounds they were illegal. Soon, the sign’s owner emerged: Gilbert resident and conservative activist Jim Torgeson, owner of a Mesa sign shop. Within days, email and phone exchanges resulted in the town agreeing not to pull any more signs. Torgeson subsequently posted hundreds more signs.
However, once the election was through, and the bond passed by 0.4%, or 164 votes, Torgeson filed suit against the town, arguing pulling those signs denied Torgeson his free speech rights in a significant manner that could have affected the outcome of a tight election.
Torgeson lost in Maricopa County Superior Court, the Arizona Court of Appeals and the Arizona Supreme Court on the basis that the time to make his argument was before the election, not after it had been decided.
But his suit did have an effect: town officials acknowledge it is a big reason for the town’s hands-off policy on signs this season. They simply do not want the town to be sued again.
The disclosure statements became the focal point for contention, particularly with signs against a candidate. Some signs said they were paid for by a “Phillip Andrews,” which may be a pseudonym as there does not appear to be one in town. Others chose anonymity. Some gave dead phone numbers or emails for contacts.
Some added statements: “If you have a problem with the truth,” before giving a contact number. One asked “Bill” not to steal the sign. Some had no disclosure statement at all.
Donald Green, a political science professor at Columbia University who has studied the use of signs in political campaigns, said hard-hitting negativity is nothing new in American politics but what is going on with the disclosure statements takes it another step.
“That is sleazy and probably illegal,” he said. “I’m not an expert on the local law there, but if you create a fictitious campaign, I mean the group has to exist. You can’t say it’s paid for by something that doesn’t exist.”
Davidson said the disclosure statement violations are different from sign placement and restrictions in state law on when political signs can be posted.
“You have to remember too, there’s two separate things with political signs in any city or town,” she said. “There’s the campaign finance side and those requirements, which are completely separate from the statute that prohibits cities from removing political signs during a certain time period. So stuff related to campaign disclosures, that’s a whole other section, and it’s a whole different process to do campaign finance types of violations.”
The campaign finance violations also have a separate process for action, starting with the Town Clerk’s office, a notice to the person said to be in violation and an outside review of the case.
Truthfulness sometimes is absent, too. For example, signs with a disclosure statement from “Phillip Andrews” against Town Council candidate Bill Spence frequently target him for voting for apartments. But in the only major apartment vote Spence took in the five months he served as an appointee to council, he voted with opposing residents and against a developer proposing building apartments on land zoned for retail. Scott Anderson joined him, but “yes” votes from Jared Taylor, Jordan Ray, Yentes, Peterson and Daniels carried the issue for the developer.
But a lack of truth on a political sign is not an issue that can be challenged.
“That kind of innuendo is perfectly legal,” Green said. “You could say, ‘Don, stop beating your wife.’ It’s fine. There’s nothing I can do … because we don’t have a truth standard. The only way we have a truth standard is for people who are not in politics. You can’t take a person who’s not a so-called public figure and slander them or libel them. But these are public figures precisely by virtue of the fact they’re in politics.”
Green said such signs may be most effective in goading candidates, and that may have been the case when Council Member Scott September pulled up three signs outside the Southeast Regional Library early on election day, which led to a confrontation with three poll workers there, including Andrew Adams, the Arizona Legislative District 14 Republican Party chairman.
According to the police report of the incident, the witnesses told police that September contended he was doing it because the signs were lies. The men got the signs back there and they were reposted within minutes. The case has been sent to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office for review for possible misdemeanor charges.
Green noted that Justice Thomas has mused about taking away the “actual malice” standard from New York Times v. Sullivan, which mainly protects journalists covering public officials. But without that, the truth standard might apply to campaign material.
Signs did spur a satire campaign where an anonymous person, using a not-family-friendly pseudonym, put signs up in town that said Gilbert needed him, but taglined it with “Not running for anything. Just wanted to make a sign.”
Gilbert ‘kindness’
While some of the negativity might be run-of-the-mill for American politics — portraying some candidates as puppets of developers, for example — some are taking it up a notch. Recently, five signs appeared on Power Road outside the Public Safety Training Facility, where Gilbert Town Council has been meeting.
Each of the five signs targeted a council member for attack on their perceived stance on rail in Gilbert. Council has not held a recent vote on rail issues, though a possible feasibility study on commuter stations has prompted fierce civic debate.
The five signs were highly personal. For example, one taunted Anderson for wanting to “be liked” but suggested he was complicit in corruption and warned that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Peterson also was attacked, as she frequently was during the bond campaign, and thus shrugged it off. But she did express concern about what it does to the town’s reputation. She spoke about the five signs out the training facility as an example, given the facility has attracted regional, national and even some international interest in training there.
“Somebody comes to our community to train at that facility, and that’s what they see outside of our facility,” she said. “It’s not a very good look for our community. It disturbs me because of how it reflects on our community.”
She also noted that it runs counter to the #GilbertKindness campaign and said it seems some people are striving to be as mean as they can.
“It’s like everybody is so filled with angst that they don’t know how to handle that,” she said. “And it’s coming out in really different ways. I love this community, and I hate to see the response that we’re getting.”
But Peterson added she believes it is a small group that is driving that meanness and that most residents are unaware of it.
Signs’ effectiveness
Peterson said she does not like signs much as campaign tools and pointed to Council Member Yung Koprowski, who was re-elected in first place in the primary despite having fewer signs than the other top finishers.
But second place went to Torgeson, whose Mesa shop is Sign King of Arizona. His finish got him elected for the first time. Naturally, he is a big believer in the form.
“They’re extremely effective,” he said. “It all goes with name recognition. You have someone, let’s say, like Chuck Bongiovanni. Chuck came out of nowhere. Chuck had the strongest, most creative sign game of anybody. He created a name recognition. He got his feel across of who he was, how he would represent people.”
Bongiovanni finished third and also won election.
Torgeson also could point to his own bond signs. Traffic is consistently residents’ No. 1 concern on town surveys, but the bond issue, which initial polling showed would pass easily, ended up winning by a slim margin.
Torgeson said negativity can work in small, identifiable doses, pointing to signs against Spence, who finished fourth and is in a runoff for the final seat, as effective.
Torgeson said signs should stick to a name and an office and maybe one or two short bullet points.
“Simple is best,” he said. “It’s called the ‘KISS’ rule — Keep It Simple for Stupid.”
For that reason, Torgeson doubts the elaborate signs outside the Public Safety Training Facility had a large effect in town, but he believes they were not meant to.
“They had a target audience of seven, and I guarantee those seven read them,” he said, referring to the council members. “No one else did.”
Peterson said she believes small yard signs, where neighbors can see who neighbors support, are more effective than street corner signs.
Green said that was a logical theory but untested. He also said signs must be simple as people only have seconds to read them while they drive. His studies focused on whether candidates did appreciably better in the places where they were randomly putting up signs.
“And the answer is a little bit — a little bit,” he said. “We did four different studies, some more local, some more statewide. They were of all possible descriptions and, you know, on average it’s maybe a percentage point or two. So it’s not going to be a complete game-changer, but it could make a difference in a close election.”
Tom Blodgett can be reached at tblodgett@iniusa.org and found on twitter @sp_blodgett.
Tom Blodgett Senior News Editor | Gilbert @sp_blodgett
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
town of Gilbert,
Gilbert elections,
Reed v. Town of Gilbert,
Jenn Daniels,
Clyde Reed,
U.S. Supreme Court,
Clarence Thomas,
League of Arizona Cities and Towns,
Nancy Davidson,
Rene Guillen,
Aimee Yentes,
Brigette Peterson,
Jim Torgeson,
Donald Green,
Bill Spence,
Scott Anderson,
Scott September,
Andrew Adams,
Yung Koprowski,
Chuck Bongiovanni
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