Theft and vandalism of campaign yard signs is a perennial problem every election season, but Cupertino is seeing an unusually high volume of complaints this year in the sharply divided City Council race.
Cupertino City Hall has received 23 formal complaints regarding yard sign thefts, compared with just six during the last election in 2024. That’s on top of dozens of informal inquiries about yard sign violations.
“Political sign enforcement and inquiries are taking up a significant amount of staff time,” City Manager Tina Kapoor told San José Spotlight. “Each complaint requires several hours to investigate and resolve.”
On Thursday, the city added an FAQ on political signs to its website, which Kapoor said will hopefully allow the time spent on yard signs issues to dissipate and enable staff to focus on other pressing city issues.
One of the most dramatic episodes has involved former Mayor Richard Lowenthal and an Apple AirTag, a small tracking device.
Lowenthal, a supporter of Cupertino Together — a slate of three candidates encouraging development in the city — said yard signs he placed around Bollinger Road and Wunderlich Drive kept disappearing.
“So, finally, I put an AirTag in one of them, thinking I could find where it went,” Lowenthal told San José Spotlight. “I waited a couple of days and then, sure enough, it started moving.”
On the evening on Sept. 2, Lowenthal followed the AirTag for about three miles to a home in Santa Clara. He said he called 911 and the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office, which provides law enforcement in Cupertino, responded to the location.
According to Lowenthal, a deputy talked with the homeowner who had taken signs supporting Cupertino Together-backed candidates and returned 14 signs to Lowenthal.
“This isn’t just a misdemeanor squabble,” Lowenthal said of the incident. “This is more about integrity than what’s getting stolen.”
Santosh Rao, a Cupertino planning commissioner who’s running for council as a part an informal alliance of three candidates favoring more resident control over housing, said the sign stealing and vandalism “is worse than anything we have ever seen.”
He pointed to an Aug. 10 incident on McClellan Road near De Anza Boulevard where one of his campaign volunteers, Sashi Begur, witnessed a Cupertino Together supporter — whom Begur recognized — removing yard signs for the pro-neighborhood group. Begur said she asked the person for the signs, but they refused.
“This is crazy and it’s really stupid,” Begur told San José Spotlight. “It just gets more blatant every year.”
Another point of contention is whether campaign volunteers are getting permission from property owners to place yard signs — as required by state law. Cupertino and most other California cities also do not allow yard signs on public property.
The two sides in Cupertino insist they are only placing signs where permitted and with homeowner approval, while accusing each other of ignoring the rules.
“My team has instructions to not touch signs that we have not installed,” Rao told San José Spotlight. “However, if a homeowner indicates they did not install it, our volunteers may ask if they want it removed.”
Councilmember J.R. Fruen, an incumbent running for reelection on the Cupertino Together slate, has been diligently tracking the sign placements.
“My campaign has a spreadsheet with hundreds of sign locations,” he told San José Spotlight. “We know where (our supporters) are and we are certainly not deliberately planting signs anywhere someone doesn’t want them.”
At a Planning Commission meeting on Tuesday, Rao proposed a future fix to the problem — banning election yard signs altogether. However, that would likely run afoul of a 1994 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court declaring signs as a protected form of free speech under the First Amendment.
Contact Mike Langberg at [email protected].
This story originally appeared in San José Spotlight.