Letter to the Editor: Political Vandalism Needs to Stop

Subject: Political Vandalism

Matt Rhoads, Campaign Manager

Mitt Romney for President 2012

585 Commercial Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02109-1024

Dear Mr. Rhoads,

We are supporters of President Obama. We’ve demonstrated our political opinion by placing yard signage in the front yard of our home and a small sticker on the back window of our auto.

Unfortunately, last night someone “vandalized” our property by removing the auto sticker and stealing the two yard signs. Previously, one of the plastic yard signs was “punched out” in an attempt to destroy the signage.

We have to assume that this damage was done by political supporters of Governor Romney since he is the President’s main competitor in the upcoming election.

We’re writing to ask you and the entire Romney campaign to publicly disavow such activity by your campaign’s supporters and to ask them to cease and desist from such future activities. For the record, we are copying your counterpart at President Obama’s campaign to make a similar request of them.

Of course, I realize that in the grand scheme of the last 2 weeks of the campaign, this incident is probably somewhat petty and may be localized (although, we suspect that’s not the case.) You’ll probably feel that you have much higher campaign priorities.

While we may disagree on numerous policy issues, we’d like to assume that we can all agree that our right to free speech includes the right to be free from this type of harassment.  Personally, we view this incident as an infringement on our free speech and, possibly, even an attempt at voter intimidation.

Again, we would ask that the Romney (and Obama) campaign urge their respective supporters to stop any harassment of “the other guy’s” political supporters.  Freedom of speech and elections free from intimidation and fraud are important parts of the bedrock of the American system.  Please help raise the level of the competition to that which reflects positively on the office that Governor Romney seeks.

Respectfully,

Paul & Mary Warren