Ellen Bishop, coordinator of publicity in Jackson County for the campaign of U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin, also has helped put up signs for Lasater and congressional candidate Jacob Turk. She said the incidents have begun to pile up:

• Signs for Akin being defaced. Two of those have been on property owned by Mary Anne Gross and her husband, of Independence – first before the Republican primary in August and then again recently, with the image of the candidate cut out.

“Whoever is doing it doesn’t want to let other people have their freedom of speech,” Gross said.

• Reports of shots fired at three northeast Independence area homes – two of them in the Salem East area – in recent days. At one, Republicans said, a four-foot picture window was damaged.

“All those homes have political signs in their yards,” Lasater said.

• A four-foot-by-eight-foot Akin sign at U.S. 24 and Sterling Avenue was damaged. Those signs are large and prominent, and for someone like Bishop trying to get the word out for her candidate, they’re hard to come by.

“It took us weeks to get this last batch,” she said.

• Then Wednesday night, more signs – a large one for Lasater, a smaller one for Missouri House candidate Vicki Riley – near the U.S. 24 ramp onto southbound Missouri 291 were cut up, and cut-out pieces were found in a resident’s yard.

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Lasater said there’s a similarity to the vandalism, with squares or other shapes being cut out.

“There’s somebody going around cutting them with a razor blade, cutting the middle out,” he said.