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Mr. Taylor
It started out politely, innocently, before evolving into one of the ugliest moments of a crumbling School Board campaign that has severely frayed in recent days.
Every morning when banker Vernon Taylor drives to his office, he passes through the intersection of Overland Avenue and Jefferson Boulevard, long the home of the 58-year-old Culver Motor Clinic.
In late September, candidate Taylor sought out owner Jeff Gillette for permission to plant his campaign signs, choosing one of the most densely traveled, highest profiled intersections in the region.
“I placed a number of my signs there,” Mr. Taylor told the newspaper. “It’s a great corner for visibility.
“But someone, just like clockwork, religiously, would come by every evening and throw them over Mr. Gillette’s fence.
“I would go back each morning and put my signs back up. Even other people, who noticed what had happened, were putting my signs back up.”
How many times, though, can you clean up after a jealous punk without becoming exasperated?
As Mr. Taylor seeks to become the first black man ever elected to office in Culver City, the drama of the sign-stealing jealous punk reached a crescendo last Thursday.
The climactic scene:
“When Mr. Gillette came into his shop in the morning,” said Mr. Taylor, “he found that autos belonging to his customers, including his wife’s car, had been damaged by person or persons unknown throwing my signs over the fence.
“Now Mr. Gillette is going to have to pay for the damage, and I feel horrible about it. I wish there were some other way.
“Now he won’t allow me to put my signs there any longer. I understand that.
“Whoever the person is who did not want my signs there now has caused property damage.”
The story, though, does not end there.
One more dismaying twist.
Said Mr. Taylor:
“I was the first to get my signs up there, and I am not trying to say anything. But the first few times my signs were taken down, they were replaced with Kathy Paspalis signs.
“I went to Kathy. I said, ‘Hey, do you have someone in your campaign who, you know, might be engaged (in sign-stealing)?’ ‘Oh, I have no clue,’ she said.
“I said, ‘Could you pass the word throughout your campaign, ‘Hey, guys, we are trying to this civil here from dirty tricks and all that kind of stuff’?
“Well,” Mr. Taylor continued, “it stopped for two days before starting again.”
The freshman candidate was certain his signs were secure because they were tethered to steel stakes.
“I don’t want to come to any conclusions,” he said, “because I didn’t see who did it.
“I believe Kathy when she says she didn’t have any knowledge about what was going on.
“To me, this says something bigger about Culver City.
“When I put up signs last Thursday in Overland, all of them were gone.
“Is this the way we operate?” Mr. Taylor asked.
“Then to cause property damage (at the Culver Motor Clinic) on top of it. Really. I don’t understand. This is a School Board race. I am not running for President. I just don’t understand it.”
