Before I show the video, you must understand the circumstances of what was going on.

Earlier in the day I’d placed two ‘No on Issue 37’ signs along Hamilton Road at the polling location at the Fairport Shopping Center at Fairway and Hamilton. It was completely legal to do so as has been done by myself and countless others over the years. I then voted and left for a couple hours. Upon my return the signs were gone. I was pissed. Taking signs away at anytime is reprehensible to say the least*. So then, I put two more out and decided to sit in the parking lot, closest to Hamilton Road, to watch for any more thieves. Maybe I could take their photo, tell them to leave the signs alone or capture them on video. I had some books with me and nowhere to go so, there I sat.

About an hour or so sitting there, a brownish Nissan comes up on me fast. I think it must be someone I know who knows my vehicle. As they pull within a foot of my vehicle, they roll down their window and its 2018 Charter Review Commission appointee Kim Bentley with a smartphone in her hand filming me. With raised voice she says (paraphrasing), “Oh look, its Gerald Dixon!” “What’re you doing here at the polls?!” “Why are you parked here?!”, questioning the actions and behavior of my non-elected, non-appointed public official’s self. Suggesting I was perhaps doing something wrong by sitting in the parking lot. As she was doing this I was trying to get my camera on and the video started but its operation takes focus in the best of times, and so I fumbled with it as she continued. After a moment, she pulled back and parked in front of my vehicle where I finally got my camera on and videoing. That is where my video starts. (You can ask her for the entire thing from her camera if you’d like)

The second time she came up on me was when I was filming myself to show how far away from the polls I actually was and my completely legal right to be where I was parked. As I’m filming this, she comes up again. This is in the video. (At its conclusion she says something the wind distorts but its “God, get a life dude!”, to which I laugh. A person coming up to film me sitting in a parking lot is a life then?)

The third time she came back she did so to rearrange her signs again and as she left she came within a foot of my vehicle again, in the lane closer to me and not in the right-erly part of the lane in which to exit in a northerly fashion.

Finally, after awhile, I saw Councilperson Lori Elmore politicking over by the polling entrance and so decided I’d better go over and speak up for the ‘No on 37’ side. I’m there a little while, all is normal, I’m holding a yellow ‘No on Issue 37’ sign. Everyone is pretty respectful of cars coming and going in the lot, getting out of their way, moving aside to let them in or out. At one point a vehicle pulls into the lot lane from the south, coming north. There are two spots available (to my right, to the vehicles left) both within the zone where one can rightfully politick. I reasonably assume the person driving is going to take the spot closest to their entrance to the lane (I’ve moved to the most northerly stripe of the more northern lane as I await them to take the more southerly spot) Suddenly they’re going a little faster than someone gently negotiating parking amidst several people standing politicking and it comes right at me, stopping only about a foot from me causing me to pull back and stabilize my footing. I look up and say, “You almost hit me!” and there, behind the driver’s wheel was Kim Bentley. She leaned out her window and said (paraphrasing) “Dude! You’re in my spot!”

Ward 4 Councilperson Lori Elmore to my left at the polling location

As I pulled back closer to the parked car directly behind my ass and said again to those around me, “She almost hit me!”, Councilperson Elmore, who was standing just to my left said, “You were in her spot!”. The whole thing was absolutely flabbergasting. She’s in a vehicle entering a space with several pedestrians standing/moving about and comes right at me stopping a mere foot from me and then has the audacity to chastise me because I was ‘in her spot’. (Does she mean the private spot she paid for with her name on it? Because I didn’t see that there and regardless, does that still give her the right to come up on me so quickly and so close?) Sadly, I don’t have a ‘smartphone’ and I don’t keep video rolling 24/7 but, as soon as she pulled in I got the video going and her remarks, post-car, continue the same train, including intimating that because I was ‘in her spot’ that that amounted to ‘intimidation!’ My flesh and blood body v her Nissan.

This is the endorsement ‘letter’ the Committee to Extend Progress put out that used Ms. Bentley’s Charter Review Commission appointment, in part, to sell the extension of term limits to the public.

* Earlier in the day, I’d done the same thing by the Methodist Church on Etna. I’d come back by and the sign I’d put out was gone. There was a volunteer from the Franklin County Democratic Party sitting where the sign had been, at the alleyway entrance to the church on Etna, and so I asked her if she’d seen what happened. She said a lady had come up and told her the sign was “illegal”. She went into the polling place and a short while later came out, got out of her car and told the volunteer that the person inside the polling place told her she could take it out. I myself went in and asked the precinct captain whether she had given any such ‘permission’ and she said she’d not. I called Code Enforcement officer Walt Sural and we spoke for a few minutes. He told me he was instructed to leave political signs alone and that given the tradition of putting them at polling locations on election day, putting them in the small grassy strip between road and sidewalk was fine. He also told me that I could file a report with the police regarding theft because they have monetary worth. For now, I wasn’t going to do that.

So, I put another sign in where the other had been taken. I sat awhile watching it in case the person came back. After awhile I’d left and drove around making sure other signs had not been taken. As I came back down Etna, I saw my sign was still there but a ‘Yes on Issue 37’ sign had appeared and there was a woman with short grayish hair walking west, away from the volunteer and the sign. I pulled up to the volunteer and asked her if that was the woman who’d taken the sign and she said yes. She implored me not to say anything as she didn’t want “trouble”. I drove around the block to see if I could see where she lived in case I wanted to call the police. I saw her in her driveway and continued on. Out of respect for the volunteer at the polls I didn’t do anything about the person and event but, I did notice she had several ‘Yes on Issue 37’ signs in her yard. Simply despicable behavior.