{"id":462673,"date":"2026-09-13T16:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T16:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/462673\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T16:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T16:38:09","slug":"cupertino-sign-theft-complaints-hit-new-high","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/462673\/","title":{"rendered":"Cupertino sign theft complaints hit new high"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cupertino City Hall has received 23 formal complaints regarding yard sign thefts, compared with just six during the last election in 2024. That\u2019s on top of dozens of informal inquiries about yard sign violations.<\/p>\n

\u201cPolitical sign enforcement and inquiries are taking up a significant amount of staff time,\u201d City Manager Tina Kapoor told San Jos\u00e9 Spotlight. \u201cEach complaint requires several hours to investigate and resolve.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday, the city added an FAQ on political signs<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

One of the most dramatic episodes has involved former Mayor Richard Lowenthal and an Apple AirTag, a small tracking device.<\/p>\n

Lowenthal, a supporter of Cupertino Together \u2014 a slate of three candidates encouraging development in the city \u2014 said yard signs he placed around Bollinger Road and Wunderlich Drive kept disappearing.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, finally, I put an AirTag in one of them, thinking I could find where it went,\u201d Lowenthal told San Jos\u00e9 Spotlight. \u201cI waited a couple of days and then, sure enough, it started moving.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Office, which provides law enforcement in Cupertino<\/a>, responded to the location.<\/p>\n

According to Lowenthal, a deputy talked with the homeowner who had taken signs supporting Cupertino Together-backed candidates and returned 14 signs to Lowenthal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t just a misdemeanor squabble,\u201d\u00a0Lowenthal said of the incident. \u201cThis is more about integrity than what\u2019s getting stolen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Santosh Rao, a Cupertino planning commissioner who\u2019s running for council as a part an informal alliance of three candidates favoring more resident control over housing, said the sign stealing and vandalism \u201cis worse than anything we have ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 whom Begur recognized \u2014 removing yard signs for the pro-neighborhood group. Begur said she asked the person for the signs, but they refused.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is crazy and it\u2019s really stupid,\u201d Begur told San Jos\u00e9 Spotlight. \u201cIt just gets more blatant every year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another point of contention is whether campaign volunteers are getting permission from property owners to place yard signs \u2014 as required by state law. Cupertino and most other California cities<\/a> also do not allow yard signs on public property.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy team has instructions to not touch signs that we have not installed,\u201d Rao told San Jos\u00e9 Spotlight. \u201cHowever, if a homeowner indicates they did not install it, our volunteers may ask if they want it removed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"In-line<\/a><\/p>\n

Councilmember J.R. Fruen, an incumbent running for reelection on the Cupertino Together slate, has been diligently tracking\u00a0 the sign placements.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy campaign has a spreadsheet with hundreds of sign locations,\u201d he told San Jos\u00e9 Spotlight. \u201cWe know where (our supporters) are and we are certainly not deliberately planting signs anywhere someone doesn\u2019t want them.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a Planning Commission meeting on Tuesday, Rao proposed a future fix to the problem \u2014 banning election yard signs altogether. However, that would likely run afoul of a 1994 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court<\/a> declaring signs as a protected form of free speech under the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

Contact Mike Langberg at [email\u00a0protected]<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Theft and vandalism of campaign yard signs is a perennial problem every election season, but Cupertino is seeing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[712,43896,35072,88,90,89],"class_list":["post-462673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-centerpiece","tag-cupertino-city-council","tag-election-2026","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}