Elizabeth May’s campaign has been foiled – tinfoiled, that is.
At least five of May’s campaign signs have been vandalized with tinfoil hats stapled on top of the Saanich Gulf Islands MP’s head. Supporters of the incumbent Green Party candidate were quick to remove the hats, the latest in a rash of political mischief.
“If you’ve ever heard Elizabeth May in the debates, I think anyone would realize that she’s far from a tinfoil hat,” said Frances Litman, Green Party candidate for Esquimalt Saanich Sooke.
“It’s a bit surprising that people would go that far, but I think that’s uneducated emoting.”
Litman said it’s typical for election signs to get vandalized before the polls open, noting she’s seen many signs from other parties defaced recently. She said many instances of signs being knocked down can usually be attributed to teenage troublemakers.
But in regard to the tinfoil hats, Green Party volunteer co-ordinator Catherine Novak said politically targeted vandalism is a sign that the party is “playing with the big boys.”
“People are actually seeing us as a threat… and if people feel threatened, sometimes they act out in silly ways,” she said.
Const. Niwad Akbar said the Saanich Police Department is investigating the acts of vandalism, though they don’t have a lot of information to go off of at this point.
“Every year during election time, these signs get torn down,” he said. “From a police point of view, we take it as a mischief file and we investigate it as such.”
While the tinfoil hats are a new form of vandalism, Akbar declined to speculate if they are a political statement.
“It could be a number of things – we don’t know what’s going through the person’s head when they do it,” he said. “It could just be somebody thinking that they’re being funny.”
jacob.zinn@saanichnews.com