When scanner traffic indicated that a mustachioed McKinleyville rancher had called the cops on someone he caught stealing a Susan Rotwein for Harbor District sign this morning, we assumed that we might finally get a solid glimpse into the perennial Humboldt County pastime of ripping down the yard signs of your political opponents.

Rival campaigns regularly accuse each others’ supporters of this activity just about every election cycle, and now — with sheriff’s deputies en route and the rancher reportedly attempting to detain a suspect he had caught red-handed — we were hoping we might finally be able to put a face to the practice.

But it was not to be. 

A few moments ago, the LoCO received a phone call from Rotwein supporter Dennis Mayo — for yes, we can now reveal that the mustachioed rancher in question was none other than he — and Mayo gave us the whole story.

He said that he was making his usual rounds this morning, distributing and checking on Rotwein signs, when he noticed that the great big one in front of Six Rivers Brewery was missing. After performing a theatrical double-take, he noticed that the sign had been removed to the back of a van nearby.

Mayo said that he called the cops and went to confront the thief, but soon realized that it was not a politically motivated crime. The sign was not stacked neatly in the back of the vehicle — rather, it had been ineffectively employed to replace the van’s smashed window, presumably sometime during the night before, so that the perpetrator might enjoy a night’s sleep sheltered from the elements.

If the guy had been smart, Mayo later mused, he would have placed the white side of the sign facing outward. But he did not do that.

Mayo nevertheless went to the van to ask the guy what he was all about, and did not immediately get satisfactory answers.

“He was still drunk,” Mayo said. “Nothing terrible. He got out, took a swig out of his bottle, lit up a cigarette, cussed me out a bit and then wandered away.”

After police arrived, he wandered back. In the meanwhile, Mayo noticed that Rotwein was not this perpetrator’s only victim. The van man also employed, as building material, signs that supported the local fire district measure, and placards in support of the county employee’s union. Given all this, and the fact that the guy seemed like a genuine down-and-outer, Mayo told the deputy that he didn’t wish to press charges — that this fellow would pay for his misdeeds soon enough, in some other fashion.

“That’s kind of our thinking on the whole deal, too,” Mayo remembered the deputy responding.