Colleyville’s and Grapevine’s local elections have heated up as a sitting school board member admitted involvement in taking down the yard sign of a sitting Colleyville City councilman; the school board member and councilman are both running for re-election this May.
Yesterday, Colleyville Mayor Pro Tem Bobby Lindamood Jr. released a statement detailing the situation.
On Saturday, he discovered one of his campaign yard signs had been cut down at a pumpkin farm off of Pool Road and left on the ground. He posted about the incident on Facebook with a photo of the downed sign.
Later that day, Lindamood received a phone called from Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District trustee and current president, Lisa Pardo. Lindamood stated that he returned the call, and Pardo proceeded to admit that her husband cut down the sign but claimed he had done so “because he was trying to help [Lindamood].”
“They said at 10:30 p.m. the night before (Friday night), they cut the zip ties and removed my sign,” Lindamood wrote in his statement. “They claimed they felt like [it] [w]as going to be removed totally from the fence because I had 2 signs up.”
“Why they chose my big sign in the prime location and not my smaller one is still a mystery.”
Lindamood said he received no communication at all from either of the Pardos or anyone else associated with the Pardo campaign Friday night and did not hear from them until after he posted the incident on Facebook.
At the end of his statement, Lindamood said he is going to “move forward” by taking the Pardos at their word and not filing a police report.
But not everyone accepts Pardo’s explanation.
“I suppose that [explanation] may sound innocent enough…IF YOU ARE A POLITICAL ROOKIE AND NOT A 14-YEAR INCUMBENT,” wrote Northeast Tarrant Tea Party President Julie White McCarty on Facebook. McCarty, citing how it is a violation of Texas election law for one campaign to touch another campaign’s yard sign, has started an online petition demanding Pardo resign from the GCISD board.
A scan of Pardo’s social media accounts finds no statements yet posted addressing the situation.
Local elections in Colleyville and Grapevine are on May 4, with early voting beginning on April 22.
