Is there a bounty for Sherron campaign signs?

Incident in Winton.

Supporters of Claudine Sherron asked people at a gas station in Winton the other day if they could put up a 4-by-8-foot sign on a cyclone construction fence beside the property.

The people at the station said they could and thanked them for asking. The fence is festooned with campaign signs but the people at the station said no one else had asked permission to post them.

Sherron's supporters put up the sign.

Several days later, someone cut it down.

Sherron supporters inquired in Winton who had torn down the sign. People said it was two women in a blue-and-white pickup truck. Eventually, the truck was tracked to an address in town.

Claudine Sherron's husband went to the address, encountered a young man at the door and demanded either he return the sign or put it back up on the construction fence beside the gas station. The young man denied any knowledge of the sign or two women driving the pickup parked in the driveway. He said no one drove it but his father, but that perhaps someone had "borrowed" the truck for this evil purpose, which, along with the two alleged female campaign-sign thieves, he personally knew nothing about.

The dialogue was not conducted in whispers and it attracted a crowd of neighbors. Shortly after Mr. Sherron told the young man at the door that removing campaign signs was a crime, he turned to the crowd and asked if anyone had seen the sign.

One member of the crowd said he had seen the two women unloading the sign from the back of the pickup.

Mr. Sherron told the young man at the door to get the sign back up. He said people saw the women taking down the sign in the middle of the day and that the gas station cameras had tapes of it. Since Merced County voter rolls list no one registered to vote at the address, Mr. Sherron asked the young man, "Who told you to take down that sign?"

The young man loudly denied everything.

We do not know at this time if the sign has been put back up on the construction fence next to the gas station in Winton.

However, the incident raises the interesting possibility that Claudine Sherron's opponent is so desperate that her campaign is telling her supporters to tear down Sherron signs and may even be paying a bounty for them.