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Candidate Banners Can Leave Clients, Businesses Bruised
Signs for the Republican team of John McCain and Sarah Palin near the marquee at Colony South Hotel & Conference Center in Clinton -- right in Barack Obama territory -- have spurred calls for boycotts of the facility.
(By Jenna Johnson -- The Washington Post)
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Other business owners who have gotten into the political game have drawn less grief. At the Big Bad Woof pet store in liberal Takoma Park, bumper stickers urging people to "Vote for Bark Obama 2008" are available for sale. No such items were available for "John McCanine."
At B. Smith's restaurant in Union Station recently, a waiter sported an Obama campaign button. At the Old Town Trading Post in Alexandria, which sells hemp necklaces, African figurines and incense, among other novelties, an array of McCain T-shirts and a bumper sticker that reads "Friends don't let friends vote Democrat" are available for sale. A giant sign at Parson's Farm nursery in Prince William County proclaims the area "McCain Country."
Richard D'Amico, a stylist at Axis, a hair salon on Connecticut Avenue NW, has declared his work area a "Sarah Palin-Free Zone" by posting on his mirror a photo he cut out of a magazine marked with a red circle and a slash across it. The salon has Obama bags in the window. None of the clients has protested or demanded equal time for McCain, he said.
"It was such a topic of conversation -- everybody wants to talk about Sarah Palin. Even my clients stop me on the street and say, 'How about that Sarah Palin?' " said D'Amico, an Obama supporter. "So I decided I had to put a sign up."
The political partisanship, residents said, is their right as Americans.
Some Prince George's Democrats acknowledge as much.
"This is a highly charged election where the stakes are extremely high and emotions are running high on all fronts," said Orlan Johnson, a lawyer who lives in Bowie and is on Obama's national finance team. "But it is difficult for me to believe that individuals shouldn't continue to have the opportunity to exercise their right to free speech. It would be un-American to not allow that to happen."
Others say residents have a right to register their dissent.
"For a business to display a huge McCain-Palin sign in the middle of such a pro-Democratic and pro-Obama area is business suicide," Franklin said.
At Colony South, Vahabzadeh said the "Country First" message had been posted on the marquee Sunday evening by security guards after they received a memo instructing them to put it up.
Vahabzadeh said he did not know who wrote the memo and has been unable to find it. He has not spoken to the security guards, who work the midnight shift, he said.
The hotel's owner, Francis P. Chiaramonte, could not be reached at the hotel or at his home. His son, Michael Chiaramonte, chairman of the board of the Prince George's County Business Roundtable, did not return a call to his office or to the roundtable office yesterday.
