By Andy Ostmeyer

aostmeyer@joplinglobe.com

Dirty tricks aren’t unknown in a tight campaign, but over the weekend, someone crossed the line.

Specifically, someone crossed the property line and swiped the dozen or so campaign signs that Dr. Donald Patterson had placed in his yard at 210 Duquesne Road.

Patterson placed the signs in the yard to show support for the John McCain-Sarah Palin ticket, Kenny Hulshof, Peter Kinder, Roy Blunt and other Republicans.

“I had all my signs out, and it just annoyed the hell out of me,” said Patterson, 81, a former general practitioner in Joplin.

He initially placed the signs outside the fence along his frontage on Duquesne Road.

Patterson went to Republican headquarters Monday and loaded up with some new lawn signs, but the office was out of the ones for McCain-Palin.

“I put them on the inside of my fence, but you can’t see them as well,” he said.

“We have talked to dozens of people who have had their signs swiped,” said John Putnam, chairman of the Jasper County Republican Central Committee. He said workers have even put up a sign at the GOP headquarters advising people to report the theft of signs to police.

Jean Wienberg, regional press secretary in Southwest Missouri for the Barack Obama campaign, said Democrats, too, have been the victims of vandalized and stolen signs.

“Unfortunately, this is something that happens around every election,” she said, adding that Democratic officials have not noticed an uptick this year.

Cpl. Chuck Niess, spokesman for the Joplin Police Department, said the theft of signs doesn’t seem to be any worse this year than in previous elections.

“A lot of it is kids,” he said. “I don’t know that it’s a big plot to support one candidate over another.”

But for Patterson, the issue runs a little deeper than a mere prank. He was born in 1927 in Joplin and served as a gunner on a B-17 over Europe during World War II. He enlisted at age 17. He later acquired his medical degree and served as a flight surgeon during the Korean War.