Theft of rack cards amounts to bullying and censorship

There seems to be a political rite of passage around election time in Bonner County.

It's happening again this year. Just last week a bunch of political yard signs ended up in and around Snug Harbor after being picked from several Sandpoint and Dover yards.

This appears to be equal opportunity shenanigans, since both Democrat and Republican candidates' signs were plucked.

The act of thievery and misrepresentation that has gotten under my skin, though, has been perpetrated by one candidate — Lewis Rich, the Republican running for District 3 commissioner.

The Daily Bee and a few North Idaho newspapers sell spaces on newspaper racks for advertising. The money raised by these ads goes to fund Newspapers in Education.

Karl Dye, Rich's opponent; Sen. Shawn Keough; Keough's opponent, Jim Ramsey; and state representative candidate Steve Elgar have also purchased these cards. No one else's cards have been stolen other than Dye's.

The Daily Bee has offered up these cards for the last four elections and never had any stolen until this year.

While Rich has denied taking any signs himself, he has admitted to standing next to people while they took them down.

He has also gone to many businesses and asked them to put his sign up in their business because Dye has a rack card on the paper rack in the front of a store.

Most businesses have told Rich to pound sand. Others have put him off and called me, and a few have placated him and taken down the cards.

This is serious stuff. It's censorship. It's bullying and reinforces the reasons I endorsed Karl Dye's write-in candidacy for the District 3 commissioner job last Sunday.

Even though Rich denies it, a person matching Rich's description was spotted taking cards from at least one location and I have turned that information over to the Sandpoint Police Department.

This bullying, lack of understanding of basic private property laws (the racks are the Daily Bee's, the advertising on the racks is the Daily Bee's) and the fact he has pulled other people into his personal crusade should give people wonder how he would act as a commissioner.

Rich also caused a scene at the Bee when he "threw a tantrum and was having a fit," according to two Bee front office people when he demanded to know about the Dye rack cards last week.

The ads that ask voters to write in Karl Dye for county commissioner District 3 have been affixed to about 100 Daily Bee vending machines for nearly a month.

I talked to Rich about the scene he caused at the Bee office last week and asked him to quit stealing Bee property.

The disappearing rack cards incidents also came up in a political forum last week.

Rich's response showed a clear lack of understanding about respecting private property as well as freedom of expression. He also downplayed and misrepresented his "hissy fit" at the Bee.

At one point in last week's forum, candidate Bud Mueller, who is running for District 1 commissioner, told me, the moderator, to "shut up and sit down, you big baby" as I pressed Rich on his strategy about making rack cards disappear.

In that same exchange, Rich also suggested a story with Dye's name in the headline in a recent Bee was also a political ad and those papers should have been removed from racks and stores.

Rich's lack of knowledge or respect of freedom of expression or of the press, worries me.

Bob Hall, the head of the Idaho Newspaper Association, said the Bee needs to defend what's on the newspaper racks as vigorously as what's inside the racks in the newspaper.

I believe that's what I am doing with this editorial.

David Keyes is the publisher of the Bee.