Clock ticking to remove candidate signs

The clock is already ticking for candidates in Tuesday’s primary to remove hundreds of political signs stapled, stomped into the ground and otherwise displayed across Beaufort County.

County code gives candidates 48 hours after an election ends -- in this case, until Thursday night -- to pick up election signs, according to enforcement supervisor Audra Antonacci.

“Typically, they are really good about taking them down after the election,” she said. “There are a few stragglers, but typically they get the majority of them up.”

Candidates who forget might get a friendly reminder from the codes department.

“We will typically give them a courtesy call or pick them up,” said Antonacci, who added that the county does not issue fines for failure to pick up campaign signs.

Those rules don’t apply to signs on private property or in incorporated areas, for which there is a separate set of election-sign rules.
Several candidates have already started making the rounds.

Jerry Stewart, who lost to Weston Newton in the Republican primary for S.C. House District 120, said he and his supporters have already gotten most of the 180 signs they put up.

Removing them was made a little easier, he said, because more than 100 signs went missing during the course of the campaign.
“It’s unbelievable the number of signs that were taken down or that somebody destroyed,” he said.