(Don’t) sign me up

Not in my front yard … President Mark Kelly? … And Michael Crow loses it.

Amish Shah is putting in a lot of legwork ahead of the July 30 primary, where he faces five other Democrats in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District for the chance to challenge vulnerable Republican U.S. Rep. David Schweikert.

Shah’s signs litter the highly competitive district that covers parts of Phoenix, Scottsdale and Paradise Valley. And it’s not just on the roadsides. Whole neighborhoods are dotted with his small yard signs.

It’s evidence that Shah has been putting in work, knocking on doors in the 100-degree heat to talk to voters. 

But at least a handful of those voters say those signs were planted in their front yards without their permission. 

Shah knocked on Phoenix Democrat Andy Halpert’s door and even gave him his personal phone number. That came in handy when Halpert called to ask why Shah’s campaign sign was placed in his front yard. 

He was one of a half-dozen people we spoke to who insisted he never gave Shah permission to put up a sign on his property. 

“It was just 'Let's just plant this right in the middle of your yard,' And I don't have any political signs up. The audacity of it was what turned me off the most,” Halpert said. 

And Phoenix Democratic voter Sandy Kravetz told us her parents had signs posted in their yard, too. But they said they never spoke to Shah or a member of his campaign staff. 

Tova Adelman also had a conversation with Shah as he knocked on doors in her northern Scottsdale neighborhood. A few weeks ago, she came home to find Shah’s campaign sign planted in her front yard. 

Like the others, Adelman said she never agreed to have a sign in her yard. 

She called the number on a door knocker placed at her home the same day thanking her for hosting the sign. Shah’s campaign told Adelman they had her marked down to receive one, but apologized and removed it. 

It was no big deal. She probably wasn’t going to vote for him anyway, she told us, but it didn’t look good for the candidate.

“It was probably in front of my house less than an hour. So I wasn't upset, it just came across as disingenuous,” Adelman said. “My word, what I believe, means a lot to me.”

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Shah is adamant that he received permission from everyone who received a campaign sign. 

He even mails out a thank you note to the recipient for agreeing to host a campaign sign before he places it, he noted.¹ And when his campaign posts the yard sign, they post a door hanger with a number to call if the sign was posted by mistake. 

“It is fully possible that I heard them say yes. And perhaps I misunderstood,” Shah said. “I think the issue here is the one of intent. Did I intend to put a sign in somebody's lawn who didn't really want it? No. Absolutely not.”

This is his fourth campaign cycle in a row, he said, and he knows what he’s doing. Direct interaction with voters, and planting signs in their yards, has been a big part of his strategy in past campaigns. He contends less than 10 people out of 4,100 sign recipients have called to ask for the sign to be removed. 

He showed us both documented field notes and voter file data where he wrote down that Adelman, Halpert and Kravetz’s parents all agreed to host signs. 

“The last thing I want to do is put a yard sign in somebody's yard and then have them be upset at me because they think they didn't give permission,” Shah said. “And it doesn't help our campaign one bit.” 

Shah blames his opponent, Conor O’Callaghan, for launching an opposition campaign against him and spreading the narrative of nonconsensual sign hosting, saying the hard-charging, mud-slinging O’Callaghan campaign is out to get him. (Though Shah acknowledged this is not the first campaign in which he has been accused of planting unwanted signs.)

But he couldn’t explain why a half-dozen voters who he maintains did want his signs would then be annoyed enough to talk to a reporter about not wanting his sign. 

Instead, he pressed us to meet in person to show us documentation that he or a member of his campaign staff wrote down that they wanted a sign. 

We can confirm that they did, indeed, write down that they wanted a sign. But still, voters like Lisa Campo don’t remember telling them that. 

A few weeks ago, she woke up to see a Shah sign planted next to the O’Callaghan sign she already had in her front yard. Her voter file, which Shah showed us, shows she agreed to a campaign sign in April 2023. 

“Unless I've lost my mind, I have absolutely no memory of that,” Campo told us. 

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To be clear, O’Callaghan’s campaign has been pushing the unwanted sign story. O’Callaghan Tweeted about the signs, and even alleged they’re being placed at “clearly vacant homes.”

When we asked about it, the campaign was happy to put us in touch with some of the voters who say Shah planted an unwanted sign in their yard, including Deborah Begay, who’s also a Maricopa County Justice of the Peace. 

O'Callaghan has endorsed Begay’s reelection campaign, for what it’s worth. 

But several people without obvious ties to O'Callaghan’s campaign have told us they didn’t give Shah permission to plant his sign in their yard and they found it there anyway. 

All the people we talked to are adamant they didn’t agree to a sign. Shah made a point to show us his internal notes indicating otherwise, but there’s no actual recording of verbal consent.

And while the stray signs are far more likely the result of a handful of errors than of a “systematic campaign strategy,” as O’Callaghan contends, it’s still causing the voters who received signs unwittingly to sour on Shah. 

“It was such a turn-off, I didn't vote for him. I actually voted for Conor O'Callaghan,” Halpert said. 

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Man of the moment?: As big-time Democratic donors worry President Joe Biden no longer has a shot at beating former President Donald Trump, some of them are floating Sen. Mark Kelly as Biden’s potential replacement nominee, the New York Times reports. Kelly appeals to moderates, they’re saying, but he doesn’t have a lot of name recognition outside of Arizona. Meanwhile, the oldest Democratic delegate to the Democratic National Convention in the state called for Biden to back out of the race, Cronkite News’ Benjamin Adelberg reports. Roberto Reveles, 91, was the first Arizona delegate to publicly urge Biden to drop out, saying Democrats are “not blind followers.” Reveles wants to see Vice President Kamala Harris run for president, with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as her running mate.